“Based on all of the information I have available to me, including the recently completed FBI report, I have found Judge Kavanaugh to be a qualified jurist who will follow the Constitution and determine cases based on the legal findings before him,” Manchin said in a statement.

“I had to deal with the facts I had in front of me,” Manchin told reporters over shouts of “Shame!” from protesters in the hallway.

Collins revealed her decision Friday afternoon, hours after a key procedural vote in the confirmation process.

Collins voted to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination in the 51-49 vote, which saw divisions largely along party lines. The only exceptions were Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who voted no, and Manchin, who voted yes.

“I believe he is a good man,” Murkowski said afterward. “It just may be that, in my view, he’s not the right man for the court at this time.”

Collins’ remarks on the Senate floor Friday afternoon, scheduled for 3:05 p.m. ET, were initially delayed after protesters began shouting in the Senate gallery, chanting “Vote No! Show up for Maine women!”

She began her lengthy speech by tearing into the hyper-politicized nomination process, calling it a “caricature of a gutter-level political campaign.”

She also distanced herself in the speech from the partisan cloud hanging over Kavanaugh.

“I’ve never considered the president’s identity or party when evaluating Supreme Court nominations,” she said, noting that she had voted for nominees appointed by presidents of both major parties.

Collins has held her decision on Kavanaugh’s candidacy close to the vest throughout the nomination process. But she has not always kept silent on her opinion of the judge and the other political leaders involved in the process.

Her view of Kavanaugh appeared to lean in his favor in August after her one-on-one meeting with the appellate judge. The moderate senator from Maine, who is pro-choice, told reporters that Kavanaugh assured that he viewed Roe v. Wade — the perennially controversial abortion ruling — as “settled law.”

But after Kavanaugh was accused of past sexual misconduct by multiple women in mid-September, Collins was circumspect. “I don’t know enough to make a judgment at this point,” she told reporters at the time.

And she criticized President Donald Trump after he mocked one of Kavanaugh’s accusers, Christine Blasey Ford, at a rally following her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Trump’s derisive imitation of the testimony was “just plain wrong,” Collins said.

Kavanaugh has categorically denied the allegations against him.

In her Senate speech Friday, Collins also devoted significant time to discussing the sexual misconduct allegations against Kavanaugh, including an in-depth evaluation of the evidence and the witnesses who came forward to testify for and against the judge.

“Every person, man or woman, who makes a charge of sexual assault deserves to be heard and treated with respect,” she said. “The #MeToo movement is real. It matters. It is needed, and long overdue.”

She concluded, however, that the allegations failed to meet the proper standard of evidence, and “therefore I do not believe that these charges can fairly prevent Judge Kavanaugh from serving on the court.”

Collins was careful to frame her argument respectfully regarding Ford. But she rejected another accusation by Julie Swetnick, who alleged in a bombshell declaration that Kavanaugh and others were involved in spiking girls’ drinks in the early 1980s to make it easier for them to be raped.

“That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained” in U.S. institutions, Collins said.

“I have no idea what she is talking about and evidently neither does she,” Avenatti said. “My client submitted a sworn declaration, we submitted a second written declaration from a corroborating witness, we had additionally five other witness to provide to the FBI, we repeatedly asked to meet with the FBI, to no avail. How the hell did Susan Collins make a credibility determination related to my client’s allegations when she never did any investigation whatsoever?”

Since that time we have seen special-interest groups whip their followers into a frenzy by spreading misrepresentations and outright falsehoods about Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial record. Over-the-top rhetoric and distortions of his record and testimonies at his first hearing produced short-lived headlines, which although debunked hours later, continued to live on and be spread through social media. Interest groups have also spent an unprecedented amount of dark money opposing this nomination. Our Supreme Court confirmation process has been in steady decline for more than 30 years. One can only hope that the Kavanaugh nomination is where the process has finally hit rock bottom.

Susan Collins’s standard of proof on sexual assault

Against this backdrop, it is up to each individual senator to decide what the Constitution’s advice-and-consent duty means. Informed by Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist 76, I have interpreted this to mean that the president has brought discretion to consider a nominee’s philosophy, whereas my duty as a Senator is to focus on the nominee’s qualifications as long as that nominee’s philosophy is within the mainstream of judicial thought. I have always opposed litmus tests for judicial nominees with respect to their personal views or politics, but I fully expect them to be able to put aside any and all personal preferences in deciding the cases that come before them. I’ve never considered the president’s identity or party when evaluating Supreme Court nominations. As a result, I voted in favor of Justices Roberts and Alito, who were nominated by President Bush, Justices Sotomayor and Kagan nominated by President Obama. And Justice Gorsuch, who was nominated by President Trump. So I began my evaluation of Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination by reviewing his 12-year record on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, including his more than 300 opinions and his many speeches and law review articles. 19 attorneys, including lawyers from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service briefed me many times each week and assisted me in evaluating the judge’s extensive record. I met with Judge Kavanaugh for more than two hours in my office. I listened carefully to the testimony at the committee hearings. I spoke with people who knew him personally, such as Condoleezza Rice and many others. And I talked with Judge Kavanaugh a second time by phone for another hour to ask him very specific additional questions. I also have met with thousands of my constituents, both advocates and many opponents regarding Judge Kavanaugh.

Trump played the long game on Kavanaugh.

One concern that I frequently heard was that the judge would be likely to eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s vital protections for people with preexisting conditions. I disagree with this contention. In a dissent in 7 Sky v. Holder, Judge Kavanaugh rejected a challenge to the ACA on narrow procedural grounds, preserving the law in full. Many experts have said that his dissent informed Justice Roberts’ opinion upholding the ACA at the Supreme Court. Furthermore, Judge Kavanaugh’s approach toward the doctrine of severability is narrow when a part of a statute is challenged on constitutional ground, he has argued for severing the invalid clause as surgically as possible while allowing the overall law to remain in tact. This was his approach and his dissent in a case that involved a challenge to the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In his dissent, Judge Kavanaugh argued for, quote, “severing any problematic portions while leaving the remainder intact,” end quote. Given the current challenges to the ACA, proponents, including myself of protections for people with preexisting conditions should want a justice who would take just this kind of approach.

Another assertion that I’ve heard often is that Judge Kavanaugh cannot be trusted if a case involving alleged wrongdoing by the president were to come before the court. The basis for this argument seems to be two-fold. First, Judge Kavanaugh has written that he believes Congress should enact legislation to protect presidents from criminal prosecution or civil liability while in office. Mr. President, I believe opponents missed the mark on this issue. The fact that Judge Kavanaugh offered this legislative proposal suggests that he believes that the president does not have such protection currently. Second, there are some who argue that given the current special counsel investigation, President Trump should not even be allowed to nominate a justice. That argument ignores our recent history. President Clinton in 1993 nominated Justice Ginsburg after the Whitewater investigation was already underway, and she was confirmed 96-3. The next year, just three months after independent counsel Robert Fisk was named to lead the Whitewater investigation, President Clinton nominated Justice Breyer. He was confirmed 87-9.

Supreme Court Justices have not hesitated to rule against the presidents who have nominated them. Perhaps most notably in the United States v. Nixon, three Nixon appointees who heard the case joined the unanimous opinion against him. Judge Kavanaugh has been unequivocal in his belief that no president is above the law. He has stated that Marbury v. Madison, Youngstown Steel v. Sawyer, and the United States v. Nixon are three of the four greatest Supreme Court cases in history. What do they have in common? Each of them is a case where Congress served as a check on presidential power. And I would note that the fourth case that Judge Kavanaugh has pointed to as the greatest in history was Brown v. The Board of Education. One Kavanaugh decision illustrates the point about the check on presidential power directly. He wrote the opinion in Hamdan v. The United States, a case that challenges the Bush administration’s military commission prosecution of an associate of Osama Bin Laden. This conviction was very important to the Bush administration, but Judge Kavanaugh, who had been appointed to the DC circuit by President Bush and had worked in President Bush’s White House, ruled that the conviction was unlawful. As he explained during the hearing, quote, “We don’t make decisions based on who people are or their policy preferences or the moment. We base decisions on the law,” end quote.

Others I’ve met with have expressed concerns that Justice Kennedy’s retirement threatens the right of same-sex couples to marry, yet Judge Kavanaugh described the Obergefell decision, which legalized same-gender marriages, as an important landmark precedent. He also cited Justice Kennedy’s recent Masterpiece Cake Shop opinion for the Court’s majority stating that, quote, “the days of treating gay and lesbian americans or gay and lesbian couples as second-class citizens who are inferior in dignity and worth are over in the Supreme Court,” end quote. Others have suggested that the judge holds extreme views on birth control. In one case Judge Kavanaugh incurred the disfavor of both sides of the political spectrum for seeking to ensure the availability of contraceptive services for women while minimizing the involvement of employers with religious objections. Although his critics frequently overlook this point, Judge Kavanaugh’s dissent rejected arguments that the government did not have a compelling interest in facilitating access to contraception. In fact, he wrote that the Supreme Court precedent strongly suggested that there was a compelling interest in facilitating access to birth control.

There has also been considerable focus on the future of abortion rights based on the concern that Judge Kavanaugh would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade. Protecting this right is important to me. To my knowledge, Judge Kavanaugh is the first Supreme Court nominee to express the view that precedent is not merely a practice and tradition but rooted in Article 3 of our Constitution itself. He believes that precedent is not just a judicial policy, it is constitutionally dictated to pay attention and pay heed to rules of precedent. In other words, precedent isn’t a goal or an aspiration, it is a constitutional tenet that has to be followed, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. The judge further explained that precedent provides stability, predictability, reliance and fairness.

Does ‘settled law’ mean Kavanaugh will uphold Roe v. Wade?

There are, of course, rare and extraordinary times where the Supreme Court would rightly overturn a precedent. The most famous example was when the Supreme Court in Brown v. The Board of Education overruled Plessy v. Ferguson, correcting a grievously wrong decision, to use the judge’s term, allowing racial inequality. But someone who believes that the importance of precedent has been rooted in the Constitution would follow long established precedent, except in those rare circumstances where a decision is grievously wrong or deeply inconsistent with the law. Those are Judge Kavanaugh’s phrases. As the judge asserted to me, a long-established precedent is not something to be trimmed, narrowed, discarded or overlooked. Its roots in the Constitution give the concept of stare decisis greater weight such that the precedent can’t be trimmed or narrowed simply because a judge might want to on a whim. In short, his views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly. Noting that Roe v. Wade was decided 35 years ago and reaffirmed 19 years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, I asked Judge Kavanaugh whether the passage of time is relevant to following precedent. He said decisions become part of our legal framework with the passage of time and that honoring precedent is essential to maintaining public confidence.

Our discussion then turned to the right of privacy on which the Supreme Court relied in Griswold v. Connecticut, a case that struck down the law banning the use and sale of contraceptives. Griswold established the legal foundation that led to Roe eight years later. In describing Griswold as settled law, Judge Kavanaugh observed that it was the correct application of two cases from the 1920s, Myers and Pierce, that are not seriously challenged by anyone today. Finally, in his testimony he noted repeatedly that Roe had been upheld by Planned Parenthood v. Casey, describing it as precedent on precedent. When I asked him would it be sufficient to overturn a long established precedent if five current justices believed that it was wrongly decided, he emphatically said no. Opponents frequently cite then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to nominate only judges who would overturn Roe. The republican platform for all presidential campaigns has included this pledge since at least 1980. During this time Republican presidents have appointed Justices O’Connor, Souter and Kennedy to the Supreme Court. These are the very three justices, Republican president-appointed justices, who authored the Casey decision, which reaffirmed Roe. Furthermore, pro-choice groups vigorously opposed each of these justices nominations. Incredibly they even circulated buttons with the slogan “Stop Souter or Women Will Die.” Just two years later, Justice Souter co-authored the Casey opinion reaffirming a woman’s right to choose. Suffice it to say prominent advocacy organizations have been wrong.

Bribery, crowdfunding, and the strange case of Senator Susan Collins

These same interest groups have speculated that Judge Kavanaugh was selected to do the bidding of conservative ideologues despite his record of judicial independence. I asked the judge point blank whether he had made any commitments or pledges to anyone at the White House, to Federalist Society or any outside group on how he would decide cases. He unequivocally assured me he had not. Judge Kavanaugh has received rave reviews for his 12-year track record as a judge, including for his judicial temperament. The American Bar Association gave him its highest possible rating. Its standing committee on the federal judiciary conducted an extraordinarily thorough assessment, soliciting input from almost 500 people, including his judicial colleagues. The ABA concluded that his integrity, judicial temperament and professional confidence met the highest standards.

Lisa Blatt, who has argued more cases before the Supreme Court than any other woman in history testified, quote, “By any objective measure, Judge Kavanaugh is clearly qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. His opinions are invariably thoughtful and fair.” Ms. Blatt, who clerked for him, is an ardent admirer of Justice Ginsburg, and who is an unapologetic defender of a woman’s right to choose, says that Judge Kavanaugh fits within the main stream of legal thought. She also observed that Judge Kavanaugh is remarkably committed to promoting women in the legal profession. That Judge Kavanaugh is more of a centrist than some of his critics maintain is reflected in the fact that he and Chief Judge Merrick Garland voted the same way in 93 percent of the cases that they heard together. Indeed Chief Judge Garland joined in more than 96 percent of the majority opinions authored by Judge Kavanaugh, dissenting only once.

Despite all this, Kavanaugh’s record, and listening to 32 hours of his testimony, the Senate’s advice and consent role was thrown into a tailspin following the allegations of sexual assault by Professor Christine Blasey Ford. The confirmation process now involves evaluating whether or not Judge Kavanaugh committed sexual assault and lied about it to the Judiciary Committee. Some argue that, because this is a lifetime appointment to our highest courts, public interest requires that doubts be resolved against the nominee. Others see the public interest as abiding to our longest tradition of affording to those accused of misconduct a presumption of innocence. In cases in which the facts are unclear, they would argue that the question should be resolved in favor of the nominee.

Did the Democrats mishandle the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh?

Mr. President, I understand both viewpoints. This debate is complicated further by the fact that the Senate confirmation process is not a trial. But certain fundamental legal principles about due process, the presumption of innocence and fairness do bear on my thinking and I cannot abandon them. In evaluating any given claim of misconduct, we will be ill-served in the long run if we abandon the presumption of innocence and fairness, tempting though it may be. We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy. The presumption of innocence is relevant to the advice and consent function when an accusation departs from a nominee’s otherwise exemplary record. I worry that departing from this presumption could lead to a lack of public faith in the judiciary and would be hugely damaging to the confirmation process moving forward.

Mitch McConnell’s legacy is riding on Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Some of the allegations levied against Judge Kavanaugh illustrate why the presumption of innocence is so important. I am thinking in particular not of the allegations raised by Professor Ford, but of the allegation that when he was a teenager, Judge Kavanaugh drugged multiple girls and used their weakened state to facilitate gang rape. This outlandish allegation was put forth without any credible supporting evidence and simply parroted public statements of others. That such an allegation can find its way into the Supreme Court confirmation process is a stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness.

Mr. President, I listened carefully to Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Judiciary Committee. I found her testimony to be sincere, painful and compelling. I believe that she is a survivor of a sexual assault and that this trauma has upended her life. Nevertheless, the four witnesses she named could not corroborate any of the events of that evening gathering where she says the assault occurred. None of the individuals Professor Ford says were at the party has any recollection at all of that night. Judge Kavanaugh forcefully denied the allegations under penalty of perjury. Mark Judge denied under penalty of felony that he had witnessed an assault. PJ Smyth, another person allegedly at the party, denied that he was there under penalty of felony. Professor Ford’s lifelong friend, Leland Keyser, indicated that under penalty of felony she does not remember that party. And Ms. Keyser went further. She indicated that not only does she not remember a night like that, but also that she does not even know Brett Kavanaugh.

The FBI investigation didn’t go very far by design.

In addition to the lack of corroborating evidence, we also learned some facts that raised more questions. For instance, since these allegations have become public, Professor Ford testified that not a single person has contacted her to say I was at the party that night. Furthermore, the professor testified that although she does not remember how she got home that evening, she knew that because of the distance she would have needed a ride, yet not a single person has come forward to say that they were the one who drove her home or were in the car with her that night. And Professor Ford also indicated that, even though she left that small gathering of six or so people abruptly and without saying good-bye, and distraught, none of them called her the next day or ever to ask why she left, is she okay, not even her closest friend Ms. Keyser. Mr. President, the Constitution does not provide guidance on how we are supposed to evaluate these competing claims. It leaves that decision up to each senator. This is not a criminal trial, and I do not believe that the claims such as these need to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, fairness would dictate that the claims at least should meet a threshold of more likely than not as our standard. The facts presented do not mean that Professor Ford was not sexually assaulted that night or at some other time, but they do lead me to conclude that the allegations fail to meet the more likely than not standard. Therefore, I do not believe that these charges can fairly prevent Judge Kavanaugh from serving on the court.

The most striking thing about Trump’s mockery of Christine Blasey Ford

Let me emphasize that my approach to this question should not be misconstrued as suggesting that unwanted sexual contact of any nature is not a serious problem in this country. To the contrary, if any good at all has come from this ugly confirmation process, it has been to create an awareness that we have underestimated the pervasiveness of this terrible problem. I have been alarmed and disturbed, however, by some who have suggested that unless Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination is rejected, the Senate is somehow condoning sexual assault. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every person, man or woman, who makes a charge of sexual assault deserves to be heard and treated with respect. The MeToo movement is real. It matters. It is needed and it is long overdue. We know that rape and sexual assault are less likely to be reported to the police than other forms of assault. On average, an estimated 211,000 rapes and sexual assaults go unreported every year. We must listen to survivors, and every day we must seek to stop the criminal behavior that has hurt so many. We owe this to ourselves, our children and generations to come.

Since the hearing I have listened to many survivors of sexual assault. Many were total strangers who told me their heart-wrenching stories for the first time in their lives. Some were friends that I had known for decades, yet with the exception of one woman who had confided in me years ago, I had no idea that they had been the victims of sexual attacks. I am grateful for their courage and their willingness to come forward, and I hope that in heightening public awareness, they have also lightened the burden that they have been quietly bearing for so many years. To them I pledge to do all that I can to ensure that their daughters and granddaughters never share their experiences. Over the past few weeks I have been emphatic that the Senate has an obligation to investigate and evaluate the serious allegations of sexual assault. I called for and supported the additional hearing to hear from both Professor Ford and Judge Kavanaugh. I also pushed for and supported the FBI’s supplemental background investigation. This was the right thing to do.

Christine Ford never sought the spotlight. She indicated that she was terrified to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and she has shunned attention since then. She seemed completely unaware of Chairman Grassley’s offer to allow her to testify confidentially in California. Watching her, Mr. President, I could not help but feel that some people who wanted to engineer the defeat of this nomination cared little, if at all, for her well-being. Professor Ford testified that a very limited number of people had access to her letter, yet that letter found its way into the public domain. She testified that she never gave permission for that very private letter to be released and yet here we are. We are in the middle of a fight that she never sought, arguing about claims that she wanted to raise confidentially.

Now, one theory I’ve heard espoused repeatedly is that our colleague, Senator Feinstein leaked Professor Ford’s letter at the 11th hour to derail this process. I want to state this very clearly. I know Senator Dianne Feinstein extremely well and I believe that she would never do that. I knew that to be the case before she ever stated that at the hearing. She is a person of integrity and I stand by her. I have also heard some argue that the chairman of the committee somehow treated Professor Ford unfairly. Nothing could be further from the truth. Chairman Grassley, along with his excellent staff, treated Professor Ford with compassion and respect throughout the entire process. And that is the way the Senator from Iowa has conducted himself throughout a lifetime dedicated to public service.

But the fact remains, Mr. President, someone leaked this letter against Professor Ford’s express wishes. I suspect, regrettably, that we will never know for certain who did it. To that leaker who I hope is listening now, let me say that what you did was unconscionable. You have taken a survivor who was not only entitled to your respect but also trusted you to protect her and you have sacrificed her well being in a misguided attempt to win whatever political crusade you think you are fighting. My only hope is that your callous act has turned this process into such a dysfunctional circus that it will cause the Senate and indeed all Americans to reconsider how we evaluate Supreme Court nominees. If that happens, then the appalling lack of compassion you afforded Professor Ford will at least have some unintended positive consequences.

Mr. President, the politically charged atmosphere surrounding this nomination has reached a fever pitch, even before these allegations were known, and it has been challenging even then to separate fact from fiction. We live in a time of such great disunity, as the bitter fight over this nomination both in the Senate and among the public clearly demonstrates. It is not merely a case of differing groups having different opinions. It is a case of people bearing extreme ill will toward those who disagree with them. In our intense focus on our differences, we have forgotten the common values that bind us together as Americans. When some of our best minds are seeking to develop even more sophisticated algorithms designed to link us to websites that only reinforce and cater to our views, we can only expect our differences to intensify. This would have alarmed the drafters of our Constitution, who were acutely aware that different values and interests could prevent Americans from becoming and remaining a single people. Indeed, of the six objectives they invoked in the preamble to the Constitution the one that they put first was the formation of a more perfect union. Their vision of a more perfect union does not exist today. And if anything, we appear to be moving farther away from it. It is particularly worrisome that the Supreme Court, the institution that most Americans see as the principle guardian of our shared Constitutional heritage is viewed as part of the problem through a political lens.

Mr. President, we’ve heard a lot of charges and counter-charges about Judge Kavanaugh. But as those who have known him best have attested, he has been an exemplary public servant, judge, teacher, coach, husband and father. Despite the turbulent, bitter fight surrounding his nomination, my fervent hope is that Brett Kavanaugh will work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court so that we have far fewer 5-4 decisions and so that public confidence in our judiciary and our highest court is restored. Mr. President, I will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. Thank you, Mr. President.

Story 2: 3.7% U-3 Unemployment Rate Lowest Since December 1969 — Labor Participation Rate of 62,7% Well Below Normal 66-67% Range in Clinton and Bush Years — Only 134,000 Non farm Payroll Jobs Created in September With Upward Revision of August to 270,000 Jobs Created — Videos

Larry Kudlow: It’s a very good jobs picture

Fed’s Williams on Jobs Report, Neutral Rate, Inflation

Employment Situation Summary

Transmission of material in this news release is embargoed until USDL-18-1586
8:30 a.m. (EDT) Friday, October 5, 2018
Technical information:
Household data: (202) 691-6378 * cpsinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/cps
Establishment data: (202) 691-6555 * cesinfo@bls.gov * www.bls.gov/ces
Media contact: (202) 691-5902 * PressOffice@bls.gov
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- SEPTEMBER 2018
The unemployment rate declined to 3.7 percent in September, and total nonfarm payroll employment increased
by 134,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in professional and
business services, in health care, and in transportation and warehousing.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Hurricane Florence |
| |
| Hurricane Florence affected parts of the East Coast during the September reference periods |
| for the establishment and household surveys. Response rates for the two surveys were within |
| normal ranges. For information on how severe weather can affect employment and hours data, |
| see Question 8 in the Frequently Asked Questions section of this news release. |
| |
| BLS will release the state estimates of employment and unemployment on October 19, 2018, at |
| 10:00 a.m. (EDT). |
|_________________________________________________________________________________________________|
Household Survey Data
The unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 3.7 percent in September, and the number of
unemployed persons decreased by 270,000 to 6.0 million. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the
number of unemployed persons declined by 0.5 percentage point and 795,000, respectively. (See table A-1.)
Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult women (3.3 percent) and Whites (3.3
percent) declined in September. The jobless rates for adult men (3.4 percent), teenagers (12.8 percent),
Blacks (6.0 percent), Asians (3.5 percent), and Hispanics (4.5 percent) showed little or no change over
the month. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)
The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 1.4 million
over the month; these individuals accounted for 22.9 percent of the unemployed. (See table A-12.)
In September, the labor force participation rate remained at 62.7 percent, and the employment-population
ratio, at 60.4 percent, was little changed. (See table A-1.)
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-
time workers) increased by 263,000 to 4.6 million in September. These individuals, who would have
preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were
unable to find full-time jobs. (See table A-8.)
In September, 1.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, essentially unchanged from
a year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted
and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not
counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See
table A-16.)
Among the marginally attached, there were 383,000 discouraged workers in September, about unchanged from a
year earlier. (Data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking
for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.2 million persons marginally
attached to the labor force in September had not searched for work for reasons such as school attendance
or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.)
Establishment Survey Data
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 134,000 in September, compared with an average monthly gain of
201,000 over the prior 12 months. In September, job gains occurred in professional and business services,
in health care, and in transportation and warehousing. (See table B-1.)
Employment in professional and business services increased by 54,000 in September and has risen by 560,000
over the year.
Health care employment rose by 26,000 in September. Hospitals added 12,000 jobs, and employment in
ambulatory health care services continued to trend up (+10,000). Over the year, health care employment has
increased by 302,000.
In September, employment in transportation and warehousing rose by 24,000. Job gains occurred in
warehousing and storage (+8,000) and in couriers and messengers (+5,000). Over the year, employment in
transportation and warehousing has increased by 174,000.
Construction employment continued to trend up in September (+23,000). The industry has added 315,000 jobs
over the past 12 months.
Employment in manufacturing continued to trend up in September (+18,000), reflecting a gain in durable
goods industries. Over the year, manufacturing has added 278,000 jobs, with about four-fifths of the gain
in the durable goods component.
Within mining, employment in support activities for mining rose by 6,000 over the month and by 53,000 over
the year.
Employment in leisure and hospitality was little changed over the month (-17,000). Prior to September,
employment in the industry had been on a modest upward trend. Some of the weakness in this industry in
September may reflect the impact of Hurricane Florence.
Employment showed little or no change over the month in other major industries, including wholesale trade,
retail trade, information, financial activities, and government.
The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls remained unchanged at 34.5 hours in
September. In manufacturing, the workweek edged down by 0.1 hour to 40.8 hours, and overtime edged down by
0.1 hour to 3.4 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm
payrolls was unchanged at 33.7 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.)
In September, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 8 cents to
$27.24. Over the year, average hourly earnings have increased by 73 cents, or 2.8 percent. Average hourly
earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 6 cents to $22.81 in
September. (See tables B-3 and B-8.)
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised up from +147,000 to +165,000, and the
change for August was revised up from +201,000 to +270,000. With these revisions, employment gains in July
and August combined were 87,000 more than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional
reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the
recalculation of seasonal factors.) After revisions, job gains have averaged 190,000 per month over the
last 3 months.
_____________
The Employment Situation for October is scheduled to be released on Friday, November 2, 2018, at 8:30 a.m.
(EDT).

– Over-the-month changes are not displayed for not seasonally adjusted data.
NOTE: Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. Detail for the seasonally adjusted data shown in this table will not necessarily add to totals because of the independent seasonal adjustment of the various series. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data.

Footnotes
(1) Includes other industries, not shown separately.
(2) Data relate to production employees in mining and logging and manufacturing, construction employees in construction, and nonsupervisory employees in the service-providing industries.
(3) The indexes of aggregate weekly hours are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate hours by the corresponding annual average aggregate hours.
(4) The indexes of aggregate weekly payrolls are calculated by dividing the current month’s estimates of aggregate weekly payrolls by the corresponding annual average aggregate weekly payrolls.
(5) Figures are the percent of industries with employment increasing plus one-half of the industries with unchanged employment, where 50 percent indicates an equal balance between industries with increasing and decreasing employment.
(P) Preliminary

NOTE: Data have been revised to reflect March 2017 benchmark levels and updated seasonal adjustment factors.

“The construction industry added workers and increased pay in the past year at rates higher than the overall economy,” said Ken Simonson, the chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America, a trade group. “However, the pool of unemployed workers with construction experience has nearly evaporated.”

In September, average hourly earnings for construction workers was $30.18, higher than the $27.24 earned by all workers.

The construction hiring spree of the last five years marks the second-strongest such stretch on record, economist Ed Zarenski wrote on Twitter Friday.

Ed Zarenski@EdZarenski

Construction jobs up 214k year-to-date, up more than 300k compared to Sep2017. We are in the midst of the 2nd strongest 5yr growth period for constr jobs ever recorded. added 1.4mil jobs Sep’13-Sep’18 vs 1.5mil for 5yrs 1996-2000.https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag23.htm …

The numbers for residential construction are smaller – but that trajectory is roughly the same. Still, industry groups continue to say it’s hard to find help, and qualified workers can name their price.

At the School of Concrete and Construction Management at Nashville-based Middle Tennessee State University, there were nearly six jobs open for each graduate of the program, and the average starting salary for graduates was $52,000. For all workers at all stages of professional life, the average pay in the area is $58,000 in the Nashville metro area, according to government data. While most graduates of the program take jobs in large construction firms, many choose to start their own companies, according to a spokesperson.

The Nashville housing market is one of the hottest in the country – but it’s not the only place where there’s a great need for workers – and residential construction is just one piece of the industry.

What’s more, despite the recent hiring boom, the industry still hasn’t gotten back to pre-recession levels, Zarenski noted. Only 1.85 million construction jobs have been gained since 2011 – but 2.3 million were lost as the bubble burst.

Where Are All the Builders?

Construction costs are climbing and production is lagging, in part because there aren’t enough workers to go around.

Through the first quarter of 2018, employers have been looking to fill an average of nearly 225,000 construction jobs each month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (MICHAEL S. WILLIAMSON/THE WASHINGTON POST/GETTY IMAGES)

THE UNITED STATES HAS A building problem.

The country that paved one of the most expansive highway and transportation systems on the planet, that festooned a riverside between Maryland and Virginia with ornate marble and sandstone statues, columns and monuments in the creation of the nation’s capital, that introduced architectural marvels to the world ranging from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Empire State Building to the Space Needle, is now dogged by an ailing construction industry.

A common thread has waylaid the building of a much-anticipated senior community in Oro Valley, Arizona, forced Exxon Mobil to retool the construction of what would be the world’s largest ethylene plant in San Patricio County, Texas, and spurred Home Depot into investing $50 million into skills training programs over the next 10 years: there simply aren’t enough construction workers to keep up with demand.

“For better or worse, business is good for us. They’re beating down the door,” says Tyson Conrad, the president and founder of Tampa-based Goliath Construction Consulting, which serves as a national recruiting and consultation outfit geared specifically toward the construction sector. “We’re in a place now where you have a booming economy and booming construction industry and lack of manpower. So people have gotten creative and desperate, essentially.”

Conrad works with clients across the country, many of whom seem to be telling the same story. With the economy chugging along through what is now its second-longest recovery to date and with demand for more affordable housing options as high as it’s been in years, Americans’ desire for new homes, buildings and facilities is through the roof.

But there simply aren’t enough skilled builders around to complete the work. Through the first quarter of 2018, employers have been looking to fill an average of nearly 225,000 construction jobs each month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That average was eclipsed in only one year going back to 2000, when the BLS first began tracking the data – and that year was 2007, at the tail end of the U.S. housing boom.

The labor shortage is so acute that 91 percent of more than 2,700 contractors, construction managers, builders and trade contractors surveyed in the latest Commercial Construction Indexreported having a difficult or moderately difficult time finding skilled workers.

“Among the contractors expressing concern about worker skill levels, more than one-third (37 percent) believe the problem has worsened in the last six months, and almost half (47 percent) believe it will continue to worsen in the next six months,” according to the report.

That shortage hasn’t been a terrible thing for those already in the industry, as their pay has skyrocketed in tandem with their demand. Wages of production and nonsupervisory construction employees – which excludes managers, sales personnel and accounting staff associated with the industry – climbed 3.6 percent between May 2017 and May 2018. That’s comfortably larger than the 2.8 percent wage gain production and nonsupervisory employees across the economy enjoyed over the same window.

A recent blog post from Aaron Terrazas, an economic research director at Zillow, identified even more drastic gains among residential construction workers, in particular. Such employees closed out April with a 5 percent annual wage gain, nearly double the 2.9 percent uptick for all of the economy’s private-sector workers.

“These days they’re making a killing,” Conrad says, telling the story of a client’s son who at 23 years old is making around $75,000 annually as a foreman. “For so long, it was seen that if you worked with a hard hat, you didn’t make a lot of money and you were a dummy. I can tell you that is contrary to everything that is reality.”

Construction wage growth isn’t necessarily expected to be exponential – the BLS last year estimated the top 10 percent of construction workers earned an annual wage of roughly $63,000, with top-tier construction managers bringing in nearly $160,000. But Conrad says demand for workers has created attractive options in the industry, particularly for young workers as the more established individuals phase out of the workforce.

Those in the construction industry are, on average, slightly older than workers in the rest of the economy, with a median age of 42.6. Only 1.8 percent of the industry’s workers are between 16 and 19 years old, while fewer than 9.4 percent are younger than 25. Both percentages are shy of national averages for all industries, suggesting a larger-than-normal share of construction workers are on the older side.

Conrad says he’s concerned by the fact that young people don’t seem to be embracing the industry in the same way that they used to. He partly blames budget cuts to shop and skills development opportunities in high schools while also pointing out the negative stigma he believes trade professions developed over time.

“There was a huge push in the ’90s and even in the early 2000s that if you were going to be successful, you needed to go to college. And that was the only way. And you add to that the Baby Boomers all migrating out of the workforce now – you’ve got a trifecta of major issues,” he says. “You have few people going in, a lot of people going out.”

He also points to a downtick in immigration as a driving factor in the skilled construction worker shortage. A recent industry analysis spearheaded by Natalia Siniavskaia, the assistant vice president of housing policy research at the National Association of Home Builders, found that immigrants constitute roughly 30 percent of the construction industry. In states such as California and Texas, that share sits north of 40 percent.

“Over the last two administrations, the last one and this one, we’ve seen significant drops in undocumented workers coming into the country,” Conrad says, noting that this trend has in some cases left construction employers in a bind.

In order to solve the construction shortage with domestic workers, officials and educators throughout the country have made efforts to get students more excited and more involved in working with their hands, hoping to foster a new generation of builders to help address today’s shortfall.

“I think there was a mentality here for awhile that we had to send our kids to college,” says David Curry, director of career and technical education at the Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pennsylvania. “We want our students to find success. For certain students, that doesn’t mean sitting in a classroom for four more years.”

At the Milton Hershey School, Curry stresses a “learning by doing” approach that allows students to get hands-on experience in their field of choice. The institution – founded in 1909 as the Hershey Industrial School by chocolatier Milton Hershey and his wife, Catherine – functions as a boarding school catering specifically to low-income students. It offers traditional academic coursework as well as specialized training in one of 11 career pathways for more senior students.

For students in the school’s construction and carpentry pathway, that means personally building houses in the nearby community from the ground up.

“At the start of their junior year, the house was nonexistent. It was a patch of dirt. They have been involved in every phase of the building of this house,” Curry says, noting that this year’s crop of seniors just finished the 52nd home Milton Hershey students have constructed in the area. “In their junior class, they came out and built the rafters and walled it and roofed it. They’ve spent most of their senior year working on the interior of the house. They work alongside our instructional trade professionals we have here at the school.”

Curry says the school has experienced staff members on hand to help guide the students, though it will occasionally reach out to trade workers in the community to fill gaps in their expertise. He says the school doesn’t have a painter on hand, for example, so that work will be subcontracted.

“The entire goal of this is not for our staff to build this house. At the end of the day, it’s the kids who are building the house,” Curry says. “Obviously, kids make mistakes at times, and it becomes a learning experience. But we’re not going to hand a house to a family and not have it be what it’s supposed to be.”

Four graduating seniors plan to enroll in a local technical school to continue their skills development, though Curry says interest in the construction and carpentry program is rising. Two freshmen signed up for the concentration last year, he said, while 17 jumped into it this year.

The school is relatively unique in the fact that it is supported in part by a significant endowment that was left behind after Milton Hershey’s death – so it can afford the equipment and tools necessary for students to gain such hands-on experience. But Curry says he hopes other schools are able to increase awareness of and support for trade and construction programs going forward. The jobs, he says, are certainly available.

“There’s a huge growth in opportunities nationally in trade areas,” Curry says. “Oftentimes these are kids that know they want to do that and they want to go directly into that field, either to a two-year school or directly to work. … This is designed to make sure they’re prepared for what they’ll see in the real world.”

Barbra Streisand – Memory

Midnight
Not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight
The withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile happy your days (I can dream of the old days)
Life was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
Every street lamp seems to beat
A fatalistic warning
Someone mutters and the street lamp gutters
And soon it will be morning
Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin

Burnt out ends of smoky days
The still cold smell of morning
A street lamp dies, another night is over
Another day is dawning
Touch me,
It is so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me,
You’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day has begun

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Story 3: Former FBI General Counsel James Baker Gave “Explosive” Information To Congressional Investigators About The Russian Probe and Clinton Campaign Involvement That Led To Intelligence Community Spying on Trump Campaign — Another Democratic Party Smear Campaign Was A Hoax From The Start — Waiting For Attorney General Sessions To Appoint A Second Special Counsel To Investigate FBI and Department of Justice — Videos —

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Congressional investigators have confirmed that a top FBI official met with Democratic Party lawyers to talk about allegations of Donald Trump-Russia collusion weeks before the 2016 election, and before the bureau secured a search warrant targeting Trump’s campaign.

Former FBI general counsel James Baker met during the 2016 season with at least one attorney from Perkins Coie, the Democratic National Committee’s private law firm.

That’s the firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to secretly pay research firmFusion GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election.

The dossier, though mostly unverified, was then used by the FBI as the main evidence seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in the final days of the campaign.

The revelation was confirmed both in contemporaneous evidence and testimony secured by a joint investigation by Republicans on the House Judiciary and Government Oversight committees, my source tells me.

It means the FBI had good reason to suspect the dossier was connected to the DNC’s main law firm and was the product of a Democratic opposition-research effort to defeat Trump — yet failed to disclose that information to the FISA court in October 2016, when the bureau applied for a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

“This is a bombshell that unequivocally shows the real collusion was between the FBI and Donald Trump’s opposition — the DNC, Hillary and a Trump-hating British intel officer — to hijack the election, rather than some conspiracy between Putin and Trump,” a knowledgeable source told me.

Baker was interviewed by lawmakers behind closed doors on Wednesday. Sources declined to divulge much about his testimony, other than to say it confirmed other evidence about the contact between the Perkins Coie law firm and the FBI.

The sources said Baker identified lawyer Michael Sussman, a former DOJ lawyer, as the Perkins Coie attorney who reached out to him and said the firm gave him documents and a thumb drive related to Russian interference in the election, hacking and possible Trump connections.

Information gathered separately by another congressional committee indicate the contact occurred in September, the month before the FISA warrant was approved.

A spokeswoman for the FBI declined comment. Spokespersons for Perkins Coie and the Justice Department did not return a message seeking comment.

The sources also said Baker’s interview broke new ground both about the FBI’s use of news media in 2016 and 2017 to further the Trump case and about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s conversations in spring 2017 regarding possible use of a body wire to record Trump.

“The interview was one of the most productive we had and it opened up many new investigative leads,” one source said.

Another said Baker could not answer some questions about FBI media contacts, citing an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department inspector general into alleged illegal leaks, during and after the election, about the Trump collusion probe and other matters.

These revelations illustrate anew how much the FBI and Justice Department have withheld from the public about their collaboration and collusion with clearly partisan elements of the Clinton campaign and the DNC, Fusion and Steele, that were trying to defeat Trump.

The growing body of evidence that the FBI used mostly politically-motivated, unverified intelligence from an opponent to justify spying on the GOP nominee’s campaign — just weeks before Election Day — has prompted a growing number of Republicans to ask President Trump to declassify the rest of the FBI’s main documents in the Russia collusion case.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Freedom Caucus leaders Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), veteran investigator Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and many others have urged the president to act on declassification even as FBI and Justice Department have tried to persuade the president to keep documents secret.

Ryan has said he believes the declassification will uncover potential FBI abuses of the FISA process. Jordan said he believes there is strong evidence the bureau misled the FISA court. Nunes has said the FBI intentionally hid exculpatory evidence from the judges.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He is The Hill’s executive vice president for video.

By Catherine Herridge| Fox News

A top lawyer working with the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign contacted the FBI’s general counsel in late 2016 and provided documents for the Russia probe as federal investigators prepared a surveillance warrant for Trump campaign aide Carter Page, sources close to a congressional investigation told Fox News, citing new testimony.

The FBI official who was contacted, James Baker, revealed the exchange to congressional investigators during a closed-door deposition Wednesday. He said Perkins Coie lawyer Michael Sussmann initiated contact with him and provided documents as well as computer storage devices on Russian hacking. The sources said Baker described the contact as unusual and the “only time it happened.”

Perkins Coie was a key player in the funding of the controversial anti-Trump dossier, which Republicans have long suspected helped fuel the FBI’s investigation. The DNC and Clinton campaign had hired opposition research firm Fusion GPS in April 2016, through Perkins Coie, to dig into Trump’s background. Fusion, in turn, paid British ex-spy Christopher Steele to compile the dossier, memos from which were shared with the FBI in the summer of 2016.

Sussmann’s contact with Baker suggests another connection between the early stages of the FBI’s Russia probe and those working with the DNC and Clinton campaign. Sussmann’s bio on the Perkins Coie website describes him as a former senior Justice Department official with extensive national security and cybersecurity experience: “[Sussmann] is engaged on some of the most sophisticated, high-stakes matters today, such as his representation of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in their responses to Russian hacking in the 2016 presidential election.”

Asked about Baker’s statements, however, a Perkins Coie spokesperson said Sussmann’s contact was not connected to the firm’s representation of the DNC or Clinton campaign.

The spokesperson said in a statement:

“Prior to joining Perkins Coie, Michael Sussmann served as a cybercrime prosecutor in the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice during both Republican and Democratic administrations. As a result, Sussmann is regularly retained by clients with complex cybersecurity matters.

“When Sussmann met with Mr. Baker on behalf of a client, it was not connected to the firm’s representation of the Hillary Clinton Campaign, the DNC or any Political Law Group client.”

Separately, two Republican lawmakers said after Baker’s deposition that he gave “explosive” closed-door testimony detailing how the Russia probe was handled in an “abnormal fashion” reflecting “political bias.”

Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan would not provide many specifics about the private transcribed interview, citing a confidentiality agreement with Baker and his attorneys. However, they indicated in broad terms that Baker was cooperative and forthcoming about the genesis of the Russia case in 2016, and about the surveillance warrant application for Carter Page in October 2016.

Jordan also discussed the revelation of the FBI’s additional source. “During the time that the … DOJ and FBI were putting together the FISA (surveillance warrant) during the time prior to the election, there was another source giving information directly to the FBI, which we found the source to be pretty explosive,” Jordan said.

Baker is at the heart of surveillance abuse allegations, and his deposition lays the groundwork for next week’s planned closed-door interview with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Baker, as the FBI’s top lawyer, helped secure the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for Page, as well as three subsequent renewals. Prior to the deposition, Republican investigators said they believed Baker could explain why information about Steele and his apparent bias against then-candidate Trump were withheld from the FISA court, and whether any exculpatory information was known to Rosenstein when he signed the final FISA renewal for Page in June 2017.

Fox News asked Baker after the deposition about the handling of the Trump dossier, what he told Rosenstein about potential exculpatory evidence and whether he is the subject of an FBI leak investigation. Baker told Fox News he could not answer the questions. Baker, who had a close working relationship with former FBI Director James Comey, left the bureau earlier this year.

Rosenstein is expected on Capitol Hill on Oct. 11 for what Republican House sources have described as a closed-door interview. It comes after The New York Times reported last month that he’d discussed secretly recording the president and removing him from office using the 25th Amendment. Rosenstein and the DOJ disputed that report, calling it “inaccurate.” Rosenstein’s planned in-person meeting with Trump, meanwhile, has been pushed off amid prior speculation he might be fired or resign.

A Justice Department official said Rosenstein agreed to meet with the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., but offered no details on the format of that meeting.

Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.

By Karoun Demirjian

Congressional reporter focusing on national security

October 3

President Trump’s closest congressional allies said Wednesday that a four-hour interview with former FBI general counsel James Baker had “fundamentally changed” their understanding of the Justice Department’s Russia investigation, confirming and furthering their previous convictions that federal law enforcement agencies were biased in their scrutiny of President Trump’s campaign.

Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), both leaders in the conservative House Freedom Caucus, called the closed-door meeting the “most informative” interview they have had in the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees’ nearly year-long probe into the FBI’s investigations of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Democrats have repeatedly argued that the Republicans’ aim is to undermine and discredit the FBI and Justice Department, as well as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. They have also criticized the probe’s format of conducting private interviews, saying that doing so allows Republicans to misrepresent witnesses’ testimony.

Jordan told reporters that Baker informed them of a “completely new” and “explosive” source who provided information “directly” to the FBI “during the time that the DOJ and the FBI were putting together” an application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. He offered no details about the source or the information the source provided to the bureau beyond saying it was “related to the whole Russia investigation.”

The FBI’s press office did not immediately respond to a request to comment on Jordan’s characterization of Baker’s testimony.

Meadows and Jordan have been among Trump’s most dogged defenders as the president seeks to discredit federal law enforcement’s Russia investigations, which Trump has labeled a “witch hunt.” Earlier this year, Meadows and Jordan led a movement to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein for refusing to turn over documents they believed would expose the Mueller investigation’s “rotten foundation,” as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has described it.

Republican Party leaders’ support for their efforts has ebbed and flowed.

Jordan hinted that Baker’s testimony may have bolstered their complaint that the FBI failed to include in its surveillance application evidence that would have steered suspicion away from Page. It “sheds even more light on just how wrong this whole idea, when they took this dossier to the secret court and did what they did,” he said.

The dossier — a collection of intelligence detailing Trump’s alleged personal and business ties to Russia — has also been a chief focus of GOP lawmakers who say it was the source of the FBI’s entire investigation. The bureau denies that charge, which has also been undercut by reports that Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos told Australia’s ambassador to Britain that the Russians had dirt on Clinton months prior.

A spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee Democrats did not immediately respond to a request to comment on Jordan’s characterization of Baker’s testimony. Only a handful of lawmakers attended Wednesday’s hearing, as the House is not in session.

In recent weeks, the panel has interviewed individuals who members believe are linked to the dossier’s production and dissemination throughout the intelligence and federal law enforcement communities, including Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official who spoke with the dossier’s author on several occasions. Later this month, the panel plans to interview Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, who briefly worked as a contractor for Fusion GPS when the research firm was involved with Steele. Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson has declined an invitation to meet with the panel. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has since subpoenaed Simpson for a deposition.

Meadows and Jordan suggested Baker’s interview could be the most important for them as they prepare to speak with Rosenstein, to whom they plan to pose many of the same questions they asked of Baker about the FBI’s application to surveil Page.

Lawmakers also want to talk to Rosenstein about a New York Times report that he suggested recording Trump and potentially removing him from office. Rosenstein has denied he said those things, though he offered to resign in the wake of the report’s publication.

Baker is expected to return to Capitol Hill to finish his interview, which was cut short because of a scheduling conflict, Meadows and Jordan said. They described him as a “cooperative” witness.

Baker left the FBI in the spring, and now works at the Brookings Institution. He was a close associate of former FBI director James B. Comey, on at least one occasion receiving a memo Comey drafted following a meeting with Trump.

Baker was also linked to the members of Comey’s inner circle, including former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who wrote memos detailing Rosenstein’s alleged suggestion of wiring the president; and former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who exchanged anti-Trump text messages. McCabe, Strzok and Page have left the bureau amid questions of their ethics and conduct.

Baker was caught up in a leak probe last year surrounding news reports about surveillance techniques of an email provider that appeared to stem from a dispute between the FBI and National Security Agency. He was accused by Republicans, in a report published by Politico, of disclosing information about the Trump-Russia dossier to Mother Jones, a left-leaning media outlet. David Corn, the author of that story, has denied that Baker was his source.

Baker was never charged with wrongdoing, but he was reassigned when FBI Director Christopher A. Wray took office. He left the bureau after a decades-long career this spring, and now works at the Brookings Institution think tank.

James Baker, FBI Lawyer: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

James Baker, a top FBI lawyer and confidante of former FBI director James Comey, resigned his position with the bureau on May 4, 2018.

Baker quit on the same day as controversial FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, whose political and sometimes anti Donald Trump texts with FBI agent Peter Strzok have raised questions of bias within the Robert Mueller investigation into the president. The upheaval at the FBI has social media buzzing about Jim Baker; Baker’s name has surfaced before because he was a recipient of one of the memos that Comey wrote after meeting with President Donald Trump.

It was also previously reported by Politico that Congress was interested in contact Baker allegedly had with a reporter who first broke the story on the infamous anti-Trump dossier, although that reporter denied Baker was the leak.

According to CNN, Baker “will be going to Lawfare, a national security blog affiliated with the Brookings Institution,” and a source said he left voluntarily and was unaware Page would be resigning the same day.

Who is James A. Baker?

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Comey Called James Baker a ‘Great Public Servant’ But He Was Reassigned by Christopher Wray

Former FBI Director James Comey is sworn in while testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill June 8, 2017 in Washington, DC.

ames Comey, who has been a lightning rod figure since his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and continuing through his book disparaging the president, tweeted out kind words for Baker. According to The Post, Comey also worked with Baker at Bridgewater Associates, an investment management company.

“A great public servant retired from the FBI today,” Comey wrote on May 4, 2018 on his Twitter page. “Jim Baker’s integrity and commitment to the rule of law have benefitted our country through 5 presidents, of both parties. We are fortunate he and so many others choose to devote their lives to justice.

The previous tweet before that one was a defense by Comey of the FBI in light of comments by new Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani. “I know the New York FBI. There are no ‘stormtroopers’ there; just a group of people devoted to the rule of law and the truth. Our country would be better off if our leaders tried to be like them, rather than comparing them to Nazis,” Comey wrote.

Jim Baker was reassigned once Trump’s nominee Chris Wray took over the Bureau. “The FBI’s top lawyer, James Baker, is being reassigned — one of the first moves by new director Christopher A. Wray to assemble his own team of senior advisers as he tries to fend off accusations of politicization within the bureau,” The Washington Post reported in December 2017.

Baker was a recipient of a Comey memo involving his conversation with Trump.

The Comey memo that Baker received by email described a purported conversation with the president about unverified allegations involving Russian prostitutes in the infamous Christopher Steele dossier, which the president has denied.

New York Magazine reported that Comey kept Baker updated about his conversations with Trump, and Baker was listed in the article as an official who might be able to corroborate Comey’s accounts. “One senior law enforcement official familiar with the matter said that Comey specifically sought legal advice from Baker about when and how to tell the DOJ about Trump pressing Comey to shut down the Russia probe,” the magazine reported.

2. James Baker, Who Was Caught Up in a Leak Probe, Was Made the FBI’s General Counsel in 2014

n December 2017, The Washington Post reported that Baker had been caught up in a probe of alleged leaking in the FBI. Baker “had become caught up in what some law enforcement officials considered a particularly frustrating probe of a leak involving the FBI, the National Security Agency and stories that appeared about a year ago involving surveillance techniques for a particular email provider,” reported The Post.

Politico reported at that time that a Congressional leak investigation into Baker involved the infamous Steele dossier. “House Republicans are investigating contact between the FBI’s top lawyer and a Mother Jones reporter in the weeks before the left-leaning outlet” was first to break the story on the dossier, reported Politico, stating that “James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, communicated with Mother Jones reporter David Corn in the weeks leading up to the November 2016 election.” However, Politico also reported that Corn denied Baker was the source for his reporting on the dossier.

It was later revealed that the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC helped fund the dossier research through a law firm. The FBI authorized payments to Steele but then fired him for contacts with the news media, The Washington Times reported.

Baker also acted as counsel for Andrew McCabe, the controversial former top FBI official, Politico reported.

Comey, then FBI director, tapped James A. Baker to be the FBI’s general counsel in 2014, according to a press release put out by the FBI. The Post reported that he played a major role in many controversies, including “the FBI’s unsuccessful battle with Apple over the growing use of encryption in cellphones.”

“Jim’s experience as a career prosecutor and as a national security official, as well his experience in the private sector, make him an excellent fit for his new position here at the FBI,” Comey said in the news release.

Baker first joined the FBI in 1999. After “clerking for the Honorable Bernard A. Friedman in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Mr. Baker joined the Department of Justice (DOJ) with the Criminal Division through the Attorney General’s Honors Program in 1990 and worked as a federal prosecutor with the division’s Fraud Section,” the press release stated.

During his years at the bureau, Baker often handled legal issues relating to national security and intelligence gathering matters. A 2007 article in The Washington Post stated that Baker and another official said they “kept Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales apprised of FBI violations of civil liberties and privacy safeguards in recent years.” Gonzales was the AG for President George W. Bush.

Gonzales had denied being aware of civil liberty violations, but Baker stated, “I have discussed and informed attorneys general, including this one, about mistakes the FBI has made or problems or violations or compliance incidents, however you want to refer to them,” according to The Post.

In 2006, the Post reported that some judges were upset about the use of NSA spy data and added that Baker “discovered in 2004 that the government’s failure to share information about its spying program had rendered useless a federal screening system that the judges had insisted upon…” and that led to the “temporary suspension of the NSA spying program.”

In 1996, “Mr. Baker joined the former Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR), which later became part of DOJ’s National Security Division. From 2001 to 2007, Mr. Baker served as counsel for intelligence policy and head of OIPR,” the FBI press release stated.

“In this position, he developed, coordinated, and implemented national security policy with regard to intelligence and counterintelligence matters for the department. Moreover, he provided the attorney general, the U.S. intelligence community, and the White House with legal and policy advice on a range of national security issues and conducted oversight of the intelligence community, including the FBI, on behalf of the attorney general.”

4. Baker Lectured at Harvard Law School & Worked for Verizon

“A year later, he received the NSA’s Intelligence Under Law Award; the NSA Director’s Distinguished Service Medal; and DOJ’s highest award— the Edmund J. Randolph Award.”

He then worked in academia and in the private sector – for Verizon – before returned to the FBI to work on cyber security matters.

“That same year, he became a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a lecturer at Harvard Law School,” the press release said. “From 2008 to 2009, Mr. Baker was assistant general counsel for national security at Verizon Business. He then returned to DOJ, and from 2009 to 2011, served as an associate deputy attorney general working on a range of national security issues, including cyber security.”

5. Baker Attended College in Michigan & at Notre Dame

Baker “holds a juris doctorate and master’s degree from the University of Michigan and is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame,” the FBI press release stated.

Michigan Law School published an article about Baker’s career, in which he was quoted as saying, “Throughout my career, I’ve been extremely lucky to have a series of fascinating jobs that have been extremely rewarding. Being General Counsel for the FBI means I have to deal with all of the legal risks and issues that confront the entire FBI—everything from counterterrorism to civil rights, and all of the FBI’s priorities across the board.”

Baker explained why he kept choosing a career in government, telling Michigan Law, of his “desire to serve the country and to have a positive impact on the world” has led him to return to roles in government time and again.”

NYT accuses Trump of engaging in ’90s era ‘tax schemes’

Trump expresses outrage over New York Times tax report

NYT reporter who broke Trump tax story details investigation

With No Evidence, President Donald Trump Calls NYT Story A ‘Hit Piece’ | Hardball | MSNBC

Paul Krugman: Trump and the aristocracy of fraud

Posted Friday, October 5, 2018 9:21 pm

By Paul Krugman

NEW YORK — It turns out that I may have done President Donald Trump an injustice.

You see, I’ve always been skeptical of his claims to be a great dealmaker. But what we’ve just learned is that his negotiating prowess began early. Indeed, it was so amazing that he was already making $200,000 a year in today’s dollars at a very young age.

Specifically, that’s what he was making when he was three years old. He was a millionaire by the age of eight. Of course, the money came from his father — who spent decades evading the taxes he was legally required to pay on money given to his children.

The blockbuster New York Times report on the Trump family’s history of fraud is really about two distinct although linked kinds of fraudulence.

On one side, the family engaged in tax fraud on a huge scale, using a variety of money-laundering techniques to avoid paying what it owed. On the other, the story Donald Trump tells about his life — his depiction of himself as a self-made businessman who made billions starting from humble roots — has always been a lie: Not only did he inherit his wealth, receiving the equivalent of more than $400 million from his father, but Fred Trump bailed his son out after deals went bad.

One implication of these revelations is that Trump supporters who imagine that they’ve found a straight-talking champion who will drain the swamp while using his business acumen to make America great again have been suckered, bigly.

But the tale of the Trump money is part of a bigger story. Even among those unhappy at the extent to which we live in an era of soaring inequality and growing concentration of wealth at the top, there has been a tendency to believe that great wealth is, more often than not, earned more or less honestly. It’s only now that the amounts of sheer corruption and lawbreaking that underlie our march toward oligarchy have started to come into focus.

Until recently, my guess is that most economists, even tax experts, would have agreed that tax avoidance by corporations and the wealthy — which is legal — was a big issue, but tax evasion — hiding money from the tax man — was a lesser one. It was obvious that some rich people were exploiting legal if morally dubious loopholes in the tax code, but the prevailing view was that simply defrauding the tax authorities and hence the public wasn’t that widespread in advanced countries.

SHAKY FOUNDATIONS

But this view always rested on shaky foundations. After all, tax evasion, almost by definition, doesn’t show up in official statistics, and the superwealthy aren’t in the habit of mouthing off about what great tax cheats they are. To get a real picture of how much fraud is going on, you either have to do what The Times did — exhaustively investigate the finances of a particular family — or rely on lucky breaks that reveal what was previously hidden.

Two years ago, a huge lucky break came in the form of the Panama Papers, a trove of data leaked from a Panamanian law firm that specialized in helping people hide their wealth in offshore havens, and a smaller leak from HSBC. While the unsavory details revealed by these leaks made headlines right away, their true significance has only become clear with work done by Berkeley’s Gabriel Zucman and associates in cooperation with Scandinavian tax authorities.

Matching information from the Panama Papers and other leaks with national tax data, these researchers found that outright tax evasion actually is a big deal at the top. The truly wealthy end up paying a much lower effective tax rate than the merely rich, not because of loopholes in tax law, but because they break the law. The wealthiest taxpayers, the researchers found, pay on average 25 percent less than they owe — and, of course, many individuals pay even less.

This is a big number. If the United States’ wealthy evade taxes on the same scale (which they almost surely do), they’re probably costing the government around as much as the food stamp program does. And they’re also using tax evasion to entrench their privilege and pass it on to their heirs, which is the real Trump story.

CHEATING

The obvious question is, what are our elected representatives doing about this epidemic of cheating? Well, Republicans in Congress have been on the case for years: They’ve been systematically defunding the Internal Revenue Service, crippling its ability to investigate tax fraud. We don’t just have government by tax cheats; we have government of tax cheats, for tax cheats.

What we’re learning, then, is that the story of what’s happening to our society is even worse than we thought. It’s not just that the president of the United States is, as veteran tax reporter David Cay Johnston put it, a “financial vampire,” cheating taxpayers the way he has cheated just about everyone else who deals with him.

Beyond that, our trend toward oligarchy — rule by the few — is also looking more and more like kakistocracy — rule by the worst, or at least the most unscrupulous. The corruption isn’t subtle; on the contrary, it’s cruder than almost anyone imagined. It also runs deep, and it has infected our politics, quite literally up to its highest levels.

Statement to The Times from Charles J. Harder, a lawyer for President Trump
The New York Times’ allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100% false, and
highly defamatory. There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon
which the Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate. All
estate matters were handled by licensed attorneys, licensed CPAs and licensed
real estate appraisers who followed all laws and rules strictly. All matters were
filed with the IRS and New York taxing authorities. The returns and tax positions
that the Times now attacks were examined in real time by the relevant taxing
authorities. The taxing authorities requested a few minor adjustments, which
were made, and then fully approved all of the tax filings. These matters have now
been closed for more than a decade.

President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters.
The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts
themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed
professionals to ensure full compliance with the law. Should the Times state or
imply that President Trump participated in fraud, tax evasion, or any other
crime, it will be exposing itself to substantial liability and damages for
defamation.

11 Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Trump’s Wealth

Image

President Trump received today’s equivalent of over $400 million from the real estate empire of his father, Fred C. Trump, whose photograph sits behind him in the Oval Office.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Donald J. Trump built a business empire and won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help. “I built what I built myself,” the president has repeatedly said.

But an investigation by The New York Times has revealed that Donald Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire. What’s more, much of this money came to Mr. Trump through dubious tax schemes he participated in during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, The Times found.

In all, the president’s parents transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate on gifts and inheritances that was in place at the time. Helped by a variety of tax dodges, the Trumps paid $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax returns show.

The president declined requests over several weeks to comment for this article.

A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Charles J. Harder, provided a written statement. “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which The Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate,” he said. “President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters,” he continued, saying the president had delegated those tasks to relatives and tax professionals. “The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals to ensure full compliance with the law.”

In a statement on behalf of the Trump family, the president’s brother, Robert Trump, said, “All appropriate gift and estate tax returns were filed, and the required taxes were paid.”

Since Donald Trump first refused to release his income tax returns, his campaign and then his presidency have been suffused with questions about the extent and sources of his wealth, questions that have only intensified with the Russia investigation. The Times’s new reporting reveals little about his recent business dealings. But the investigation — based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, and at more than 13,000 words one of the longest investigative articles ever published in The Times — offers the first comprehensive examination of the inherited fortune and tax dodges that guaranteed Mr. Trump a gilded life.

Here are some key takeaways.

The Trumps’ tax maneuvers show a pattern of deception, tax experts say

The line between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion is often murky, and there is no shortage of clever tax-avoidance tricks that have been blessed by either the courts or the Internal Revenue Service itself; the wealthiest Americans rarely pay anything close to full freight. The Trumps’ tax maneuvers met with little resistance from the I.R.S., The Times found.

But tax experts briefed on The Times’s findings said the Trumps appeared to have done more than exploit legal loopholes. They said the conduct described here represented a pattern of deception and obfuscation that repeatedly prevented the I.R.S. from taxing large transfers of wealth to Fred Trump’s children.

Donald Trump began reaping wealth from his father’s real estate empire as a toddler

In Donald Trump’s version of how he got rich, he was the master dealmaker who broke free from his father’s “tiny” Brooklyn and Queens real estate operation and built a $10 billion empire that would slap the Trump name on hotels, high-rises, casinos and golf courses the world over.

Mr. Trump in 1982 atop Trump Tower, a Manhattan skyscraper that his father’s money helped build and that established him as a major player in New York.CreditFred R. Conrad/The New York Times

But The Times’s investigation makes clear that in every era of Mr. Trump’s life, his finances were deeply entwined with, and dependent on, his father’s wealth. By age 3, he was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. In his 40s and 50s, he was receiving more than $5 million a year.

There was a clear pattern to this largess: When his son began expensive new projects, Fred Trump increased his help. In the late 1970s, when Donald Trump crossed the river into the glittering precincts of Manhattan — converting the old Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Terminal into a Grand Hyatt — his father opened a spigot of loans. When he made his first forays into Atlantic City casinos a few years later, his father devised a plan to sharply increase the flow of aid.

That ‘small loan’ of $1 million was actually at least $60.7 million — much of it never repaid

In Mr. Trump’s books and TV shows and on the campaign trail, a central trope of his self-mythology has been that, as he began building his own empire, the only financial help he got from his father was a $1 million loan. Not only that: “I had to pay him back with interest.”

In fact, The Times found, Fred Trump lent his son at least $60.7 million, or $140 million in today’s dollars. Much of it was never repaid, records show.

Fred Trump wove a safety net that rescued his son from one bad bet after another

As the 1980s ended, Donald Trump’s big bets began to go bust — Trump Shuttle, the Plaza Hotel, the Atlantic City casinos. But as he careened from one financial disaster to another, family partnerships and companies dramatically increased their payouts.

Between 1989 and 1992, four of the entities that Fred Trump created paid his son today’s equivalent of $8.3 million. And when Donald Trump pleaded with bankers for an emergency line of credit, he used as collateral the stake his father had given him in a group of apartment buildings.

Tax records also reveal that at the peak of Mr. Trump’s financial distress, in 1990, his father extracted an extraordinary sum — nearly $50 million — from his empire. While The Times could find no evidence that Fred Trump made any significant debt payments, charitable donations or personal expenditures, there are indications that he wanted plenty of cash on hand to bail out his son if need be.

That was what happened at Trump’s Castle casino, where an $18.4 million bond payment was due in December 1990. Fred Trump dispatched a trusted bookkeeper to Atlantic City with checks to buy $3.5 million in casino chips without placing a bet. With this ruse — an illegal loan under New Jersey gaming laws, resulting in a $65,000 civil penalty — Donald Trump narrowly avoided defaulting on his bonds.

The Trumps turned an $11 million loan debt into a legally questionable tax write-off

By 1987, Donald Trump’s loan debt to his father had grown to at least $11 million. Had Fred Trump simply forgiven the debt, his son would have owed millions in income taxes. They found another solution — one that appears to constitute both an unreported multimillion-dollar gift and an illegal tax write-off.

That December, records show, Fred Trump spent $15.5 million to buy a 7.5 percent stake in Trump Palace, his son’s condo tower rising on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Four years later, tax returns and financial statements show, Fred Trump sold that stake for just $10,000. The buyer, other documents indicate, was his son.

According to tax experts, with Trump Palace condos selling briskly, selling shares worth $15.5 million to your son for a mere sliver of that would constitute a multimillion-dollar gift under I.R.S. rules. But Fred Trump’s tax returns show no such gift to Donald Trump. What they do reveal is that he used the transaction to declare an enormous tax write-off. That appears to violate federal tax law that prohibits deducting any loss from the sale or exchange of property between family members.

In all, Fred Trump dodged roughly $8 million in gift taxes and $5 million in income taxes on the transaction.

Father and son set out to create the myth of a self-made billionaire

All told, The Times documented 295 distinct streams of revenue Fred Trump created over five decades to channel wealth to his son.

But the partnership between Donald Trump and his father was about more than the pursuit, and the preservation, of riches. They were also confederates in a more ambitious project: creating the myth of Donald J. Trump, Self-Made Billionaire. If Fred Trump was the silent partner, helping finance the accouterments of wealth, it was Donald Trump who spun them into a seductive narrative.

Emblematic of this dynamic is Trump Tower, the talisman of privilege that established Donald Trump as a player in New York. Fred Trump’s money helped build it. His son recognized and exploited its iconic power as the primary stage for both “The Apprentice” and his presidential campaign.

Donald Trump tried to change his ailing father’s will, setting off a family reckoning

In December 1990, Donald Trump sent his father a document that left him both angered and alarmed. It was a codicil seeking to make a variety of changes to Fred Trump’s will. Among them: strengthening provisions that made Donald Trump sole executor of his estate. But amid Mr. Trump’s financial shambles — it was the month of the $3.5 million Trump’s Castle rescue — Fred Trump feared that the document potentially put his life’s work at risk, that his son might use the empire as collateral to save his own failing businesses, according to depositions given years later during a family dispute.

Fred Trump rebuffed the maneuver, refusing to sign the codicil. But the episode prompted a family reckoning: Fred Trump was aging and ailing. Without speedy intervention, he could die leaving a vast estate — not just his real estate empire, but also tens of millions of dollars in cash — vulnerable to the 55 percent inheritance tax.

So with Donald Trump playing a central role, the family formulated a plan that included unorthodox tax strategies that experts told The Times were legally dubious and, in some cases, appeared to be fraudulent.

The Trumps created a company that siphoned cash from the empire

The first major component was creating a company called All County Building Supply & Maintenance. On paper, All County was Fred Trump’s purchasing agent, buying everything from boilers to cleaning supplies. But All County was, in fact, a company only on paper, records and interviews show — a vehicle to siphon cash from Fred Trump’s empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions in markups, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to All County’s owners — Donald Trump, his siblings and a cousin.

Lee-Ford Tritt, a leading expert in gift and estate tax law at the University of Florida, said the Trumps’ use of All County was “highly suspicious” and could constitute criminal tax fraud. “It certainly looks like a disguised gift,” he said.

Image

In President Trump’s version of how he got rich, he was the master dealmaker who parlayed a $1 million loan from his father into a $10 billion empire.CreditMarilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

All County also had an insidious downside for Fred Trump’s tenants. He used the padded invoices to justify higher rent increases in rent-regulated buildings, records show.

Mr. Harder, the president’s lawyer, disputed The Times’s reporting: “Should The Times state or imply that President Trump participated in fraud, tax evasion or any other crime, it will be exposing itself to substantial liability and damages for defamation.”

The Trump parents dodged hundreds of millions in gift taxes by grossly undervaluing the assets they would pass on

With the cash flowing out of Fred Trump’s empire, the Trumps began transferring ownership of the lion’s share of the empire itself to Donald Trump and his siblings. The vehicle they created to do that was a special kind of trust called a grantor-retained annuity trust, or GRAT.

The purpose of a GRAT is to pass wealth across generations without paying the 55 percent estate tax. The Trump parents did have to pay gift taxes based on one crucial number: the market value of Fred Trump’s empire. But The Times found evidence that they dodged hundreds of millions of dollars in gift taxes by submitting tax returns that grossly undervalued the assets placed in two GRATs, one for each parent.

Fred Trump’s 1995 gift tax return claimed that the 25 apartment complexes and other properties in the trusts were worth just $41.4 million. The implausibility of this claim would be made plain in 2004, when banks valued that same real estate at nearly $900 million.

“They play around with valuations in extreme ways,” said Mr. Tritt, the tax law expert, who was briefed on The Times’s findings. “There are dramatic fluctuations depending on their purpose.”

After Fred Trump’s death, his empire’s most valuable asset was an I.O.U. from Donald Trump

When Fred Trump died in June 1999 at the age of 93, the vast bulk of his empire was nowhere to be found in his estate — testament to the success of the tax strategies devised by the Trumps in the early 1990s. The single largest item included in his estate tax return was a $10.3 million I.O.U. from Donald Trump, money his son appears to have borrowed the year before he died. As for the remnants of empire left in Fred Trump’s estate, the tax return cited appraisals that once again grossly understated their market values.

As their father’s executors, Donald, Maryanne and Robert Trump were legally responsible for the accuracy of his estate tax return. They were obligated not only to give the I.R.S. a complete accounting of the value of his estate’s assets, but also to disclose all the taxable gifts he had made during his lifetime. If they knew anything was wrong and failed to reveal it, tax experts said, they could be in violation of tax law.

Mr. Harder, the president’s lawyer, defended the tax returns filed by the Trumps. “The returns and tax positions that The Times now attacks were examined in real time by the relevant taxing authorities,” he said. “These matters have now been closed for more than a decade.”

Donald Trump got a windfall when the empire was sold. But he may have left money on the table.

In 2003, once again in financial trouble, Donald Trump began engineering the sale of the empire Fred Trump had hoped would never leave the family. The sale, completed in 2004, brought him his biggest payday ever from his father: His cut was $177.3 million, or $236.2 million in today’s dollars. But as it turned out, banks at the time valued the empire at hundreds of millions more than the sale price. Donald Trump, master dealmaker, had sold low.

Trump Lawyer Warns New York Times of Tax Story ‘Defamation,’ ‘Substantial Liability’

The lawyer who won a multi-million dollar libel settlement for Melania Trump is now warning The New York Times about a story suggesting her husband, President Donald Trump, may have committed tax fraud.

“President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found.”

….

“But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.”

….

“While the records do not include the president’s personal tax returns and reveal little about his recent business dealings at home and abroad, dozens of corporate, partnership and trust tax returns offer the first public accounting of the income he received for decades from various family enterprises.”

In its story, the Timeslinks to a statement from Charles J. Harder, a lawyer for Pres. Trump, declaring the story’s allegations are “100% false, and highly defamatory” – and based on “extremely inaccurate” claims.

Harder warns that the Times allegations expose it to “substantial liability and damages for defamation”:

Statement to The Times from Charles J. Harder, a lawyer for President Trump

The New York Times’ allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100% false, and highly defamatory. There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which the Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate. All estate matters were handled by licensed attorneys, licensed CPAs and licensed real estate appraisers who followed all laws and rules strictly. All matters were filed with the IRS and New York taxing authorities. The returns and tax positions that the Times now attacks were examined in real time by the relevant taxing authorities. The taxing authorities requested a few minor adjustments, which were made, and then fully approved all of the tax filings. These matters have now been closed for more than a decade.

President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters. The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals to ensure full compliance with the law. Should the Times state or imply that President Trump participated in fraud, tax evasion, or any other crime, it will be exposing itself to substantial liability and damages for defamation.

The U.S. Just Tore Up a Six-Decade-Old Treaty With Iran

nistration has been tightening the screws on Iran ever since the U.S. withdrew in May from the nuclear deal. It has imposed sanctions, increased its hostile rhetoric, and threatened its own allies for working with Tehran. Now comes one more item on that list: On Wednesday, the Trump administration tore up the little-known, Eisenhower-era Treaty of Amity with the Islamic Republic on the same day the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that U.S. sanctions on Iran must exempt humanitarian items.

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In announcing the decision concerning the 1955 treaty, Mike Pompeo, the U.S. secretary of state, said at the State Department, “This is a decision, frankly, that is 39 years overdue.”

The more than six-decade-old accord survived the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran that was followed by the takeover of the U.S. Embassy, and the hostage-taking of 52 Americans, including diplomats, for 444 days. It also survived what has mostly been low after low in the intervening decades, including near weekly chants of “Death to America” in the Islamic Republic, round after round of crippling U.S. sanctions, and even the shooting down, by the U.S. military, of an Iranian airliner with 290 people on board. As Farshad Kashani wrote in The National Interest, the two countries have used the treaty’s dispute-resolution mechanism, which relies on the ICJ, at various times since 1988, when the Iran Air flight was shot down—most recently in July.

That’s when Iran brought a case at The Hague–based court alleging violations of the Treaty of Amity, challenging, among other things, the U.S. withdrawal from the multilateral nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic. But the court’s ruling Wednesday was much narrower in scope, dealing only with the sale of “humanitarian” goods to Iran, which the court said the U.S. should not sanction. Pompeo said that “existing exceptions, authorizations, and licensing policies for humanitarian-related transactions and safety of flight will remain in effect.” But, he added, “we’re disappointed that the court failed to recognize that it has no jurisdiction to issue any orders related to these sanctions measures with the United States.” The ICJ’s orders are legally binding but not enforceable.

The Trump administration is meanwhile preparing to impose more punitive measures on the Islamic Republic next month. At the United Nations last week, Donald Trump asked “all nations to isolate Iran’s regime as long as its aggression continues.”

The Trump administration says it wants countries that buy Iranian oil to reduce their imports to zero, and has even threatened to sanction its partners who do business with Iran if they don’t stop. Those partners, which include European countries, Russia, and China, are working to devise their own system to work with Iran in order to keep the Islamic Republic in the nuclear agreement under which it agreed to freeze its nuclear program in exchange for political and economic incentives. Additionally, the administration has set up an Iran Action Group whose work is centered on nuclear activities, terrorism, and the detention of American citizens in Iran.

The U.S. says the nuclear agreement rewarded Iran despite its malign activities. It accuses the Islamic Republic of supporting terrorism, of pursuing a ballistic-missile program, of supporting Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime, and of fomenting unrest in Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq. Indeed, Iran’s influence in Iraq has become a key point of friction between the two countries as the fragile Iraqi state tries to form a government. Both countries have a strong influence in Iraq that they are keen to preserve. In past years, they have maintained a tacit understanding on their respective allies in the country.

But last week, the U.S. pulled American diplomats from the consulate in Basra, just days after accusing Iran of not preventing rockets being fired at the facility. On Wednesday, Pompeo repeated those remarks, holding Tehran responsible.

“Iran is the origin of the current threat to Americans in Iraq,” he said. “Our intelligence in this regard is solid. We can see the hand of the ayatollah and his henchmen supporting these attacks on the United States.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Wednesday that the United States would be terminating a 1955-era treaty of amity with Iran that regulates economic and consular ties between the two countries. Pompeo called it a move that was “39 years overdue.”

Ties between the two nations have been strained for decades but have come to a head since the Trump administration moved to pull out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The administration has admonished Iran and the regime’s leadership for its “malign behavior” and for pursuing nuclear ambitions.

The court said sanctions on goods “required for humanitarian needs… may have a serious detrimental impact on the health and lives of individuals on the territory of Iran.”

Pompeo said Iran had brought a “meritless case” to the ICJ, alleging violations of the 1955 pact, and he suggested Iran wants to challenge the U.S. decision to pull out of the nuclear deal.

“Iran has attempted to interfere with the sovereign rights of the United States to take lawful actions as necessary to protect our national security and Iran is abusing the ICJ for political and propaganda purposes,” said Pompeo.

Pompeo said in the meantime, the U.S. will continue to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iranian people, but called on Iranian leadership to spend money on its own people, instead of “fomenting terror around the world.”

“Those are dollars the Iranian leadership is squandering, they could be providing humanitarian assistance to their own people but have chosen a different path,” he said.

In addition to leaving the amity treaty, national security adviser John Bolton announced during Wednesday’s press briefing that the U.S. will also withdraw from the Optional Protocol and Dispute Resolution to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, in connection with a case brought by the Palestinians to the ICJ challenging the United States’ embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem earlier this year.

“We will commence a review of all international agreements that may still expose the US to purported binding jurisdiction dispute resolution in the International Court of Justice — admin will conduct a review of all its involvement with the International Court of Justice,” he said.

Bolton told reporters that the U.S. remains a party to the underlying Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, “and we expect all other parties to abide by their international obligations under the convention.”

The administration’s latest comments came after President Trump chaired a meeting of the UN Security Council last week and emphasized the importance of keeping the world free of the scourge of chemical weapons. The meeting focused on the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly in Iran.

Bolton calls U.N. world court ‘politicized,’ U.S. to limit exposure

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is taking steps to avoid exposure to binding decisions by the International Court of Justice, the U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said on Wednesday as he accused the U.N. court of being “politicized and ineffective.”

U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton answers a question from a reporter about how he refers to Palestine during a news conference in the White House briefing room in Washington, U.S.,

October 3, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier on Wednesday said that Washington was terminating a treaty of amity with Tehran, after the International Court ordered the United States to ensure that sanctions against Iran, due to be tightened next month, did not affect humanitarian aid or civil aviation.

The ICJ, based in The Hague, in the Netherlands, is the United Nations’ venue for resolving disputes between nations.

There have been mounting concerns among U.S. allies about the Trump administration’s commitment to multilateralism.

In the nearly two years since being elected, President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States from a nuclear agreement between six powers and Iran, pulled out of a global climate accord, left the U.N. cultural agency, and threatened NATO military allies that the United States would “go its own way” if members did not spend more on defense.

U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton answers questions from reporters after announcing that the U.S. will withdraw from the Vienna protocol and the 1955 “Treaty of Amity” with Iran as White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders looks on during a news conference in the White House briefing room in Washington, U.S., October 3, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis

Wednesday’s ruling by the International Court handed a small victory to Tehran, which had argued that sanctions imposed since May by the Trump administration violated the terms of a 1955 Treaty of Amity between the two countries.

Bolton, citing what he called “Iran’s abuse of the ICJ,” said that the United States would withdraw from the “optional protocol” under the 1961 Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Relations.

“We will commence a review of all international agreements that may still expose the United States to purported binding jurisdiction, dispute resolution in the International Court of Justice,” Bolton said on Wednesday. “The United States will not sit idly by as baseless politicized claims are brought against us.”The decision to withdraw from the optional protocol follows a complaint brought by the Palestinians in September, which challenged Washington’s decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Vienna Convention is an international treaty setting out diplomatic relations between states. It is often cited as a means to provide diplomatic immunity.

In 2005, the Bush administration took issue with the ICJ after it ruled that the execution of a Mexican national in Texas breached U.S. obligations under international law.

The Palestinians argued that the U.S. government’s placement of its embassy in Jerusalem violated an international treaty and that it should be moved.

“This really has less to do with Iran and the Palestinians than with the continued consistent policy of the United States to reject the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, which we think is politicized and ineffective,” Bolton said.

He added: “I’d like to stress the United States remains a party to the underlying Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and we expect all other parties to abide by their international obligations under the convention.”

The International Court of Justice (abbreviated ICJ; commonly referred to as the World Court)[1] is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN). It settles legal disputes between member states and gives advisory opinions to authorized UN organs and specialized agencies. It comprises a panel of 15 judges elected by the General Assembly and Security Council for nine-year terms. It is seated in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands.[2]

The court’s workload covers a wide range of judicial activity. After the court ruled that the United States‘s covert war against Nicaragua was in violation of international law (Nicaragua v. United States), the United States withdrew from compulsory jurisdiction in 1986 to accept the court’s jurisdiction only on a case-by-case basis.[4]Chapter XIV of the United Nations Charter authorizes the UN Security Council to enforce Court rulings. However, such enforcement is subject to the veto power of the five permanent members of the Council, which the United States used in the Nicaragua case.[5]

Composition

The ICJ is composed of fifteen judges elected to nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council from a list of people nominated by the national groups in the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The election process is set out in Articles 4–19 of the ICJ statute. Elections are staggered, with five judges elected every three years to ensure continuity within the court. Should a judge die in office, the practice has generally been to elect a judge in a special election to complete the term.

No two judges may be nationals of the same country. According to Article 9, the membership of the court is supposed to represent the “main forms of civilization and of the principal legal systems of the world”. Essentially, that has meant common law, civil law and socialist law (now post-communist law).

There is an informal understanding that the seats will be distributed by geographic regions so that there are five seats for Western countries, three for African states (including one judge of francophonecivil law, one of Anglophone common law and one Arab), two for Eastern European states, three for Asian states and two for Latin American and Caribbean states.[6] For most of the court’s history, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (France, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States) have always had a judge serving, thereby occupying three of the Western seats, one of the Asian seats and one of the Eastern European seats. Exceptions have been China not having a judge on the court from 1967 to 1985, during which time it did not put forward a candidate, and British judge Sir Christopher Greenwood being withdrawn as a candidate for election for a second nine-year term on the bench in 2017, leaving no judges from the United Kingdom on the court.[7] Greenwood had been supported by the UN Security Council but failed to get a majority in the UN General Assembly.[7] Indian judge Dalveer Bhandari instead took the seat.[7]

Article 6 of the Statute provides that all judges should be “elected regardless of their nationality among persons of high moral character” who are either qualified for the highest judicial office in their home states or known as lawyers with sufficient competence in international law. Judicial independence is dealt with specifically in Articles 16–18. Judges of the ICJ are not able to hold any other post or act as counsel. In practice, members of the court have their own interpretation of these rules and allow them to be involved in outside arbitration and hold professional posts as long as there is no conflict of interest. A judge can be dismissed only by a unanimous vote of the other members of the court.[8] Despite these provisions, the independence of ICJ judges has been questioned. For example, during the Nicaragua case, the United States issued a communiqué suggesting that it could not present sensitive material to the court because of the presence of judges from Eastern bloc states.[9]

Judges may deliver joint judgments or give their own separate opinions. Decisions and Advisory Opinions are by majority, and, in the event of an equal division, the President’s vote becomes decisive, which occurred in the Legality of the Use by a State of Nuclear Weapons in Armed Conflict (Opinion requested by WHO), [1996] ICJ Reports 66. Judges may also deliver separate dissenting opinions.

Ad hoc judges[

Article 31 of the statute sets out a procedure whereby ad hoc judges sit on contentious cases before the court. The system allows any party to a contentious case (if it otherwise does not have one of that party’s nationals sitting on the court) to select one additional person to sit as a judge on that case only. It is thus possible that as many as seventeen judges may sit on one case.

The system may seem strange when compared with domestic court processes, but its purpose is to encourage states to submit cases. For example, if a state knows that it will have a judicial officer who can participate in deliberation and offer other judges local knowledge and an understanding of the state’s perspective, it may be more willing to submit to the jurisdiction of the court. Although this system does not sit well with the judicial nature of the body, it is usually of little practical consequence. Ad hoc judges usually (but not always) vote in favour of the state that appointed them and thus cancel each other out.[10]

Chambers

Generally, the court sits as full bench, but in the last fifteen years, it has on occasion sat as a chamber. Articles 26–29 of the statute allow the court to form smaller chambers, usually 3 or 5 judges, to hear cases. Two types of chambers are contemplated by Article 26: firstly, chambers for special categories of cases, and second, the formation of ad hoc chambers to hear particular disputes. In 1993, a special chamber was established, under Article 26(1) of the ICJ statute, to deal specifically with environmental matters (although it has never been used).

Ad hoc chambers are more frequently convened. For example, chambers were used to hear the Gulf of Maine Case (Canada/US).[11] In that case, the parties made clear they would withdraw the case unless the court appointed judges to the chamber acceptable to the parties. Judgments of chambers may either less authority than full Court judgments or diminish the proper interpretation of universal international law informed by a variety of cultural and legal perspectives. On the other hand, the use of chambers might encourage greater recourse to the court and thus enhance international dispute resolution.[12]

Current composition

As of 22 June 2018, the composition of the court is as follows:[13][14]

Jurisdiction

As stated in Article 93 of the UN Charter, all 193 UN members are automatically parties to the court’s statute.[15] Non-UN members may also become parties to the court’s statute under the Article 93(2) procedure. For example, before becoming a UN member state, Switzerland used this procedure in 1948 to become a party, and Nauru became a party in 1988.[16] Once a state is a party to the court’s statute, it is entitled to participate in cases before the court. However, being a party to the statute does not automatically give the court jurisdiction over disputes involving those parties. The issue of jurisdiction is considered in the three types of ICJ cases: contentious issues, incidental jurisdiction, and advisory opinions.[17]

Contentious issues

First gathering after Second World War, Dutch newsreel from 1946

In contentious cases (adversarial proceedings seeking to settle a dispute), the ICJ produces a binding ruling between states that agree to submit to the ruling of the court. Only states may be parties in contentious cases. Individuals, corporations, parts of a federal state, NGOs, UN organs and self-determination groups are excluded from direct participation in cases although the court may receive information from public international organizations. That does not preclude non-state interests from being the subject of proceedings if a state brings the case against another. For example, a state may, in cases of “diplomatic protection”, bring a case on behalf of one of its nationals or corporations.[18]

Jurisdiction is often a crucial question for the court in contentious cases. (See Procedure below.) The key principle is that the ICJ has jurisdiction only on the basis of consent. Article 36 outlines four bases on which the court’s jurisdiction may be founded:

First, 36(1) provides that parties may refer cases to the court (jurisdiction founded on “special agreement” or “compromis“). This method is based on explicit consent rather than true compulsory jurisdiction. It is, perhaps, the most effective basis for the court’s jurisdiction because the parties concerned have a desire for the dispute to be resolved by the court and are thus more likely to comply with the court’s judgment.

Second, 36(1) also gives the court jurisdiction over “matters specifically provided for… in treaties and conventions in force”. Most modern treaties contain a compromissory clause, providing for dispute resolution by the ICJ.[19]Cases founded on compromissory clauses have not been as effective as cases founded on special agreement since a state may have no interest in having the matter examined by the court and may refuse to comply with a judgment. For example, during the Iran hostage crisis, Iran refused to participate in a case brought by the US based on a compromissory clause contained in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and did not comply with the judgment.[20] Since the 1970s, the use of such clauses has declined. Many modern treaties set out their own dispute resolution regime, often based on forms of arbitration.[21]

Third, Article 36(2) allows states to make optional clause declarations accepting the court’s jurisdiction. The label “compulsory” sometimes placed on Article 36(2) jurisdiction is misleading since declarations by states are voluntary. Furthermore, many declarations contain reservations, such as exclusion from jurisdiction certain types of disputes (“ratione materia“).[22] The principle of reciprocity may further limit jurisdiction. As of February 2011, sixty-six states had a declaration in force.[23] Of the permanent Security Council members, only the United Kingdom has a declaration. In the court’s early years, most declarations were made by industrialized countries. Since the Nicaragua Case, declarations made by developing countries have increased, reflecting a growing confidence in the court since the 1980s.[citation needed] Industrialized countries, however, have sometimes increased exclusions or removed their declarations in recent years. Examples include the United States, as mentioned previously, and Australia, which modified its declaration in 2002 to exclude disputes on maritime boundaries (most likely to prevent an impending challenge from East Timor, which gained their independence two months later).[24]

Finally, 36(5) provides for jurisdiction on the basis of declarations made under the Permanent Court of International Justice‘s statute. Article 37 of the Statute similarly transfers jurisdiction under any compromissory clause in a treaty that gave jurisdiction to the PCIJ.

In addition, the court may have jurisdiction on the basis of tacit consent (forum prorogatum). In the absence of clear jurisdiction under Article 36, jurisdiction is established if the respondent accepts ICJ jurisdiction explicitly or simply pleads on the merits. The notion arose in the Corfu Channel Case (UK v Albania) (1949), in which the court held that a letter from Albania stating that it submitted to the jurisdiction of the ICJ was sufficient to grant the court jurisdiction.

Incidental jurisdiction

Until rendering a final judgment, the court has competence to order interim measures for the protection of the rights of a party to a dispute. One or both parties to a dispute may apply the ICJ for issuing interim measures. In the Frontier Dispute Case, both parties to the dispute, Burkina Faso and Mali submitted an application to the court to indicate interim measures.[25] Incidental jurisdiction of the court derives from the Article 41 of the Statute of it.[26] Such as the final judgment, the order for interim measures of the court are binding on state parties to the dispute. The ICJ has competence to indicate interim measures only if the prima facie jurisdiction is satisfied.

Advisory opinions

An advisory opinion is a function of the court open only to specified United Nations bodies and agencies. The UN Charter grants the General Assembly or the Security Council a power to request the court to issue an advisory opinion on any legal question. Other organs of the UN rather than GA and SC may not request an advisory opinion of the ICJ unless the General Assembly authorizes them. Other organs of the UN only request an advisory opinion of the court regarding the matters falling into the scope of their activities.[27] On receiving a request, the court decides which states and organizations might provide useful information and gives them an opportunity to present written or oral statements. Advisory opinions were intended as a means by which UN agencies could seek the court’s help in deciding complex legal issues that might fall under their respective mandates.

In principle, the court’s advisory opinions are only consultative in character but they are influential and widely respected. Certain instruments or regulations can provide in advance that the advisory opinion shall be specifically binding on particular agencies or states, but inherently, they are non-binding under the Statute of the Court. This non-binding character does not mean that advisory opinions are without legal effect, because the legal reasoning embodied in them reflects the court’s authoritative views on important issues of international law. In arriving at them, the court follows essentially the same rules and procedures that govern its binding judgments delivered in contentious cases submitted to it by sovereign states.

An advisory opinion derives its status and authority from the fact that it is the official pronouncement of the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.[28]

ICJ and the Security Council

Article 94 establishes the duty of all UN members to comply with decisions of the court involving them. If parties do not comply, the issue may be taken before the Security Council for enforcement action. There are obvious problems with such a method of enforcement. If the judgment is against one of the permanent five members of the Security Council or its allies, any resolution on enforcement would then be vetoed. That occurred, for example, after the Nicaragua case, when Nicaragua brought the issue of the United States’ noncompliance with the court’s decision before the Security Council.[9] Furthermore, if the Security Council refuses to enforce a judgment against any other state, there is no method of forcing the state to comply. Furthermore, the most effective form to take action for the Security Council, coercive action under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, can be justified only if international peace and security are at stake. The Security Council has never done that so far.

The relationship between the ICJ and the Security Council, and the separation of their powers, was considered by the court in 1992 in the Pan Am case. The court had to consider an application from Libya for the order of provisional measures to protect its rights, which, it alleged, were being infringed by the threat of economic sanctions by the United Kingdom and United States. The problem was that these sanctions had been authorized by the Security Council, which resulted in a potential conflict between the Chapter VII functions of the Security Council and the judicial function of the court. The court decided, by eleven votes to five, that it could not order the requested provisional measures because the rights claimed by Libya, even if legitimate under the Montreal Convention, could not be prima facieregarded as appropriate since the action was ordered by the Security Council. In accordance with Article 103 of the UN Charter, obligations under the Charter took precedence over other treaty obligations. Nevertheless, the court declared the application admissible in 1998.[29] A decision on the merits has not been given since the parties (United Kingdom, United States, and Libya) settled the case out of court in 2003.

There was a marked reluctance on the part of a majority of the court to become involved in a dispute in such a way as to bring it potentially into conflict with the Council. The court stated in the Nicaragua case that there is no necessary inconsistency between action by the Security Council and adjudication by the ICJ. However, when there is room for conflict, the balance appears to be in favour of the Security Council.

Should either party fail “to perform the obligations incumbent upon it under a judgment rendered by the Court”, the Security Council may be called upon to “make recommendations or decide upon measures” if the Security Council deems such actions necessary. In practice, the court’s powers have been limited by the unwillingness of the losing party to abide by the court’s ruling and by the Security Council’s unwillingness to impose consequences. However, in theory, “so far as the parties to the case are concerned, a judgment of the Court is binding, final and without appeal”, and “by signing the Charter, a State Member of the United Nations undertakes to comply with any decision of the International Court of Justice in a case to which it is a party.”

For example, the United States had previously accepted the court’s compulsory jurisdiction upon its creation in 1946 but in 1984, after Nicaragua v. United States, withdrew its acceptance following the court’s judgment that called on the US to “cease and to refrain” from the “unlawful use of force” against the government of Nicaragua. The court ruled (with only the American judge dissenting) that the United States was “in breach of its obligation under the Treaty of Friendship with Nicaragua not to use force against Nicaragua” and ordered the United States to pay war reparations.[9]

A complaint by the Republic of Macedonia (former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) that Greece is, by vetoing its accession to NATO, in violation of the Interim Accord of 13 September 1995[35] between the two countries. The complaint was decided in favour of Macedonia on 5 December 2011.[36]

A complaint by the Republic of India regarding death penalty awarded to Indian citizen by a Pakistani military court. [39] Pakistan arrested Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian citizen for alleged espionage and subversive activities.

Law applied

When deciding cases, the court applies international law as summarized in Article 38 of the ICJ Statute, which provides that in arriving at its decisions the court shall apply international conventions, international custom and the “general principles of law recognized by civilized nations.” It may also refer to academic writing (“the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations”) and previous judicial decisions to help interpret the law although the court is not formally bound by its previous decisions under the doctrine of stare decisis. Article 59 makes clear that the common law notion of precedent or stare decisis does not apply to the decisions of the ICJ. The court’s decision binds only the parties to that particular controversy. Under 38(1)(d), however, the court may consider its own previous decisions.

If the parties agree, they may also grant the court the liberty to decide ex aequo et bono (“in justice and fairness”),[40] granting the ICJ the freedom to make an equitable decision based on what is fair under the circumstances. That provision has not been used in the court’s history. So far, the International Court of Justice has dealt with about 130 cases.

Procedure

The ICJ is vested with the power to make its own rules. Court procedure is set out in the Rules of Court of the International Court of Justice 1978 (as amended on 29 September 2005).[12]

Cases before the ICJ will follow a standard pattern. The case is lodged by the applicant, which files a written memorial setting out the basis of the court’s jurisdiction and the merits of its claim. The respondent may accept the court’s jurisdiction and file its own memorial on the merits of the case.

Preliminary objections

A respondent that does not wish to submit to the jurisdiction of the court may raise preliminary objections. Any such objections must be ruled upon before the court can address the merits of the applicant’s claim. Often, a separate public hearing is held on the preliminary objections and the court will render a judgment. Respondents normally file preliminary objections to the jurisdiction of the court and/or the admissibility of the case. Inadmissibility refers to a range of arguments about factors the court should take into account in deciding jurisdiction, such as the fact that the issue is not justiciable or that it is not a “legal dispute”.

In addition, objections may be made because all necessary parties are not before the court. If the case necessarily requires the court to rule on the rights and obligations of a state that has not consented to the court’s jurisdiction, the court does not proceed to issue a judgment on the merits.

If the court decides it has jurisdiction and the case is admissible, the respondent then is required to file a Memorial addressing the merits of the applicant’s claim. Once all written arguments are filed, the court holds a public hearing on the merits.

Once a case has been filed, any party (usually the applicant) may seek an order from the court to protect the status quo pending the hearing of the case. Such orders are known as Provisional (or Interim) Measures and are analogous to interlocutory injunctions in United States law. Article 41 of the statute allows the court to make such orders. The court must be satisfied to have prima facie jurisdiction to hear the merits of the case before it grants provisional measures.

Applications to intervene

In cases in which a third state’s interests are affected, that state may be permitted to intervene in the case and participate as a full party. Under Article 62, a state “with an interest of a legal nature” may apply; however, it is within the court’s discretion whether or not to allow the intervention. Intervention applications are rare, and the first successful application occurred only in 1991.

Judgment and remedies

Once deliberation has taken place, the court issues a majority opinion. Individual judges may issue concurring opinions (if they agree with the outcome reached in the judgment of the court but differ in their reasoning) or dissenting opinions (if they disagree with the majority). No appeal is possible, but any party may ask for the court to clarify if there is a dispute as to the meaning or scope of the court’s judgment.[41]

The International Court has been criticized with respect to its rulings, its procedures, and its authority. As with criticisms of the United Nations, many of these criticisms refer more to the general authority assigned to the body by member states through its charter than to specific problems with the composition of judges or their rulings. Major criticisms include the following:[42][43][44]

“Compulsory” jurisdiction is limited to cases where both parties have agreed to submit to its decision, and so instances of aggression tend to be automatically escalated to and adjudicated by the Security Council. According to the sovereignty principle of international law, no nation is superior or inferior against another. Therefore, there is no entity that could force the states into practice of the law or punish the states in case any violation of international law occurs. Therefore, the absence of binding force means that the 193 member states of the ICJ do not necessarily have to accept the jurisdiction. Moreover, membership in the UN and ICJ does not give the court automatic jurisdiction over the member states, but it is the consent of each state to follow the jurisdiction that matters.

Organizations, private enterprises, and individuals cannot have their cases taken to the International Court or appeal a national supreme court’s ruling. UN agencies likewise cannot bring up a case except in advisory opinions (a process initiated by the court and non-binding). Only states can bring the cases and become the defendants of the cases. This also means that the potential victims of crimes against humanity, such as minor ethnic groups or indigenous peoples, may not have appropriate backing by a state.

Other existing international thematic courts, such as the ICC, are not under the umbrella of the International Court. Unlike ICJ, international thematic courts like ICC work independently from United Nations. Such dualistic structure between various international courts sometimes makes it hard for the courts to engage in effective and collective jurisdiction.

The International Court does not enjoy a full separation of powers, with permanent members of the Security Council being able to veto enforcement of cases, even those to which they consented to be bound.[45] Because the jurisdiction does not have binding force itself, in many cases, the instances of aggression are adjudicated by Security Council by adopting a resolution, etc. There is, therefore, a likelihood for the permanent member states of Security Council to avoid the legal responsibility brought up by International Court of Justice, as shown in the example of Nicaragua v. United States.

What will be delivered, according to aides and senators, are the “302” forms of the FBI interviews, which summarize the contents of the interviews. The FBI will not be delivering findings or a conclusion as to who’s telling the truth in the case.

All 100 Senators will have access to the new information, but not their staffs. There also are 10 Judiciary Committee staffers who have access to the Kavanaugh file, which is a paper report — there are no pdf’s or emails of it. And it will not be made public.

OCT.03.201806:58

When the supplemental background investigation is delivered, it’s unclear how the information will be disseminated to all 100 Senators in a timely fashion considering that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to vote this week.

There are not multiple copies of the background investigation file, and senators cannot go pick it up and bring it home with them. They need to either go to a secure area designated in the Judiciary Committee offices, or a designated staffer can bring it to a senator and then return it.

Republican senators said Wednesday that the file will be held in the Senate SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), which is the classified area of the Capitol Visitor’s Center. The SCIF could be used so more senators can be accommodated than in the Judiciary Committee offices, which are fairly small.

According to committee aides and a document dictating how the file is to be handled, “The Security Manager shall maintain in a locked safe a log that reflects the date, time, and particular FBI background investigation report received by the Committee.”

The information in the background investigation file is not marked top secret or classified, but it is not to be leaked to even characterized. Senators are “not allowed to share any details whatsoever,” a committee aide said.

Trump’s Mocking of Kavanaugh Accusers Stuns Senators Before Vote

Shannon Pettypiece

October 02 2018, 8:02 PMOctober 03 2018, 12:28 PM

(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump mocked two of the women who have come forward with claims that Brett Kavanaugh engaged in sexual assault and other misconduct in the 1980s, earning bipartisan criticism from U.S. senators currently weighing the Supreme Court nominee’s confirmation.

Speaking Tuesday night at a rally in Southaven, Mississippi, Trump attacked the credibility of Christine Blasey Ford, who last week testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Kavanaugh drunkenly assaulted her during a high school party more than 30 years ago.

The president, who days ago said Ford’s testimony was “very credible,” ridiculed her memory to cheers in the audience, suggesting certain details she didn’t recall were evidence that she wasn’t telling the truth.

“How did you get there? I don’t remember. Where was the place? I don’t remember,” Trump said, mocking Ford’s answers during last week’s hearing.

The remarks drew a rebuke Wednesday not just from Democrats but also Senator Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who forced an additional FBI investigation into the accusations against Kavanaugh by threatening to withhold his vote for confirmation.

Flake said Trump’s comments were “kind of appalling” in an interview with NBC News.

“There is no time and no place for remarks like that,” Flake said. “But to discuss something this sensitive at a political rally is just not right.”

Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican and key undecided vote in the Kavanaugh confirmation battle, was also critical of Trump.

“The president’s comments were just plain wrong,” Collins said in a statement.

A third undecided Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, was asked whether Trump’s comments would affect her decision on whether to back Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

“I am taking everything into account and I think the comments by the president yesterday mocking Dr. Ford were wholly inappropriate,” Murkowski said.

Their remarks echoed those of Democrats, who condemned Trump as insensitive to Ford and women who had faced sexual harassment and assault. Ford, a California psychology professor, told the Senate that she is “100 percent” certain Kavanaugh was her attacker.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer assailed Trump’s comments.

“President Trump’s outright mockery of a sexual assault survivor, riddled as it was with falsehoods, was reprehensible, beneath the office of the presidency and beneath common decency from one person to another,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “He’s ruining the norms of America. He’s so degrading the way people treat each other.”

Beto O’Rourke, the party’s candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, tweeted that Ford “should be treated with dignity and respect — not demeaned and belittled by the President of the United States.”

Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, tweeted that the remarks were “sadly what we expect from the president.”

“For a brief moment this week, I respected his relatively good comments about having a full investigation,” Jayapal said. “That lasted for a nanosecond.”

And Angus King, an independent U.S. senator from Maine who caucuses with Democrats, said in an interview with CNN that Trump’s comments “made me feel sort of sick.” The senior senator from King’s state, Republican Susan Collins, is seen as a crucial swing vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination.

“Is it any wonder that she was terrified to come forward, and that other sexual assault survivors are as well?” he tweeted. “She is a remarkable profile in courage. He is a profile in cowardice.”

GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, a strong backer of Kavanaugh, offered a milder criticism of the president while speaking to the Atlantic Festival on Wednesday. “President Trump went through a factual rendition that I didn’t particularly like, and I would tell him, knock it off. You’re not helping,” the senator said.

‘Scary Time’

On Monday, Trump said Kavanaugh’s testimony last week — which immediately followed Ford’s — showed that the nominee had “a little bit of difficulty” with alcohol when he was younger, undercutting Kavanaugh’s own portrayal of his drinking habits in high school and college.

Earlier Tuesday, the president previewed his change in tone as he departed the White House, saying “it’s a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of.” When asked whether he had a message for American women, Trump said: “Women are doing great.”

At the Mississippi rally, where Trump was promoting the candidacy of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Trump also turned his ire toward Julie Swetnick, who claims Kavanaugh took part in efforts at parties during high school to get girls intoxicated so that groups of boys could have sex with them.

“This woman had no clue what was going on, and yet she made the most horrible charges,” Trump said, pointing out that Kavanaugh went to Yale as apparent evidence that the claims were spurious.

Kavanaugh has denied Swetnick and Ford’s claims.

Midterm Effect

The controversy around Kavanaugh’s nomination has erupted just a month before the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. Trump is logging multiple trips each week to rally support for Republican candidates he needs to win, and on Tuesday showed he’s ready to stoke voters by vociferously fighting for his nominee amid an FBI investigation into the allegations.

It isn’t clear how Trump’s mockery of the women will play politically. The Kavanaugh hearing crystallized what has become a central divide in American politics. On one side: women who for decades have suffered as their stories of sexual assault and harassment went ignored or ridiculed. On the other: conservative men aggrieved by a system they see as rigged against them and rife with unfair and reputation-destroying accusations.

Opinions of Ford’s testimony — on social media and television networks — were that she was powerful and believable. Her vivid, specific and heartbreaking account invited contrast with the angry bickering over Senate rules and procedures by lawmakers, as well as Kavanaugh’s subsequent combative testimony.

Kavanaugh’s repeated references to liking beer — and initial attempts to avoid answering a question on whether he had ever blacked out from alcohol use — have been the subject of parody, including a skit on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.” Yale University classmate Charles Ludington released a statement saying Kavanaugh’s testimony — in which he eventually said he’d never blacked out — was a “blatant mischaracterization.”

The White House agreed on Monday to let the Federal Bureau of Investigation question more people in connection with the allegations that Kavanaugh was sexually abusive toward women following growing criticism that the probe was too constrained. But the bureau isn’t doing its own deep dive into the nominee’s alcohol use or whether he gave false testimony to a Senate panel last week, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Senate Majority Mitch McConnell has said the Senate will hold a confirmation vote for Kavanaugh this week.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed back at protesters who are confronting Republicans over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, saying members of the GOP won’t be prevented from taking a vote on President Donald Trump’s pick.

‘I want to make it clear to these people who are chasing my members around the hall here, or harassing them at the airports, or going to their homes: we will not be intimidated.’

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

Kentucky Republican McConnell made his vow from the floor Wednesday as senators prepare to vote on the nomination of Kavanaugh this week. The judge has been accused of sexual assault, and the vote was delayed to allow for an FBI investigation. He has denied the charges.

The Hill reports McConnell and Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, were both confronted at Reagan National Airport outside Washington on Monday by women who said they were survivors of sexual assault. Protesters have also followed senators coming in and out of hearings this week.

Republicans hold a slim 51-seat majority in the Senate, so Kavanaugh’s nomination can afford no more than one GOP defection. In the event of a tie, Vice President Mike Pence would vote.

What keeps US Fed’s Powell up at night? Everything

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell doesn’t get much sleep worrying about potential risks to the economy

Is inflation about to rise? Are interest rates too high? Or too low? Are economic risks lurking? These are the fears that keep US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell from getting a good night’s sleep.

While he was generally upbeat about the US economy, predicting that the good news could continue “effectively indefinitely,” when asked Wednesday what keeps him up at night, Powell said, “Basically everything.”

“Nobody wants a central banker who sleeps well. What good is that?” Powell told a forum hosted by The Atlantic.

Concerns about getting monetary policy right top the list but Powell said, “It’s a world full of risk. I probably lose sleep over different things every night.”

But even so, he noted that the US economy was seeing very low, and falling, unemployment along with moderate inflation.

“There is really no reason to think this cycle can’t continue for quite some time,” he said.

Whenever the next crisis comes, he predicted it will not look like the last one — and there are no signs of financial instability or banking issues — but would be something like a cyber-attack or global event.

Rising protectionism and slowing of an important economy like China would be “bad for American workers and the American economy,” he said.

But if President Donald Trump’s trade confrontations — which so far include cranking up tariffs on half of the goods imported from China — result in lower tariffs and better trade rules, “that will be good for us.”

From 1984 to 1990, Powell worked at Dillon, Read & Co., an investment bank, where he concentrated on financing, merchant banking, and mergers and acquisitions, rising to the position of vice president.[13][15]

In 1993, Powell began working as a managing director for Bankers Trust, but he quit in 1995 after the bank got into trouble when several customers suffered large losses due to derivatives. He then went back to work for Dillon, Read & Co.[15]

From 1997 to 2005, Powell was a partner at The Carlyle Group, where he founded and led the Industrial Group within the Carlyle U.S. Buyout Fund.[14][18]

After leaving Carlyle, Powell founded Severn Capital Partners, a private investment firm focused on specialty finance and opportunistic investments in the industrial sector.[19]

Federal Reserve Board of Governors]

Powell speaks in 2015

In December 2011, along with Jeremy C. Stein, Powell was nominated to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors by President Barack Obama. The nomination included two people to help garner bipartisan support for both nominees since Stein’s nomination had previously been filibustered. Powell’s nomination was the first time that a president nominated a member of the opposition party for such a position since 1988.[1] He took office on May 25, 2012, to fill the unexpired term of Frederic Mishkin, who resigned. In January 2014, he was nominated for another term, and, in June 2014, he was confirmed by the United States Senate in a 67-24 vote for a 14-year term ending January 31, 2028.[20]

On December 5, 2017, the Senate Banking Committee approved Powell’s nomination to be Chair in a 22–1 vote, with Senator Elizabeth Warren casting the lone dissenting vote.[24] His nomination was confirmed by the Senate on January 23, 2018 by a 84–13 vote.[25] Powell assumed office as Chair on February 5, 2018.

Economic philosophy

Monetary policy

A survey of 30 economists in March 2017 noted that Powell was slightly more of a monetary dove than the average member of the Board of Governors.[citation needed] However, The Bloomberg Intelligence Fed Spectrometer rated Powell as neutral (i.e. neither a hawk nor a dove). Powell has been a skeptic of round 3 of quantitative easing, initiated in 2012, although he did vote in favor of implementation.[26]

Financial regulation

Powell testifies before the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in 2018

Powell “appears to largely support” the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, although he has stated that “we can do it more efficiently”.[26] In an October 2017 speech, Powell stated that higher capital and liquidity requirements and stress tests have made the financial system safer and must be preserved. However, he also stated that the Volcker Rule should be re-written to exclude smaller banks.[26]

Housing finance reform

In a July 2017 speech, Powell said that, in regards to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the status quo is “unacceptable” and that the current situation “may feel comfortable, but it is also unsustainable”. He warned that “the next few years may present our last best chance” to “address the ultimate status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” and avoid “repeating the mistakes of the past”. Powell expressed concerns that, in the current situation, the government is responsible for mortgage defaults and that lending standards were too rigid, noting that these can be solved by encouraging “ample amounts of private capital to support housing finance activities”.[27]

Based on public filings, Powell’s net worth is estimated to be as much as $112 million.[2][3] He is the richest member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.[30]

Powell has served on the boards of charitable and educational institutions including DC Prep, a public charter school, the Bendheim Center for Finance at Princeton University, and The Nature Conservancy. He was also a founder of the Center City Consortium, a group of 16 parochial schools in the poorest areas of Washington, D.C.[18]

Job growth surged in September to its highest level in seven months as the economy put up another show of strength, according to a report Wednesday from ADP and Moody’s Analytics.

Private companies added 230,000 more positions for the month, the best level since the 241,000 jobs added in February and well ahead of the 168,000 jobs added in August.

The total was well ahead of the 185,000 jobs expected by economists surveyed by Refinitiv (formerly Thomson Reuters).

Construction grew by 34,000 as goods-producing industries overall contributed 46,000 to the final count.

“This labor market is rip-roaring hot,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNBC. “The risk that this economy overheats is very high, and this is one more piece of evidence of that.”

If the current pace continues, Zandi said he expects the unemployment rate to fall near 3 percent over the next year. The headline jobless rate currently is at 3.9 percent.

The ADP/Moody’s count comes two days ahead of the Labor Department’s closely watched nonfarm payrolls report. Economists also expect that report to show job growth of 185,000.

The jump came despite the disruption of Hurricane Florence, which ravaged the Carolinas and was expected to dent the jobs count. The nature of ADP’s methodology is such that it doesn’t include the storm victims because it only counts employees on payroll and doesn’t account for those displaced by temporary events.

“This overstates the case a little bit,” Zandi said. He added that the actual count could come down about 25,000 once the storm impact is considered.

Job gains were spread across industries, as services led with 184,000. Professional and business services contributed 70,000, while education and health services was next with 44,000, and trade, transportation, and utilities added 30,000. Leisure and hospitality and financial services each saw growth of 16,000.

There were several weak notes, however. Manufacturing added just 7,000, its weakest reading in a year, while Zandi said retail and mortgage banking also were weak.

Businesses with between 51 and 499 employees added the most by size, with 99,000 new hires. Large businesses added 75,000 while small firms contributed 56,000.

The August private payrolls count was revised up by 5,000.

The report comes at a strong time for the economy, which is coming off 4.2 percent GDP growth in the second quarter a number that could be above 4 percent for the third quarter as well. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in a speech Tuesday characterized the economy outlook among forecasters as “remarkably positive.”

Amb. Nikki Haley: World leaders respect Trump, love his honesty

Trump to world leaders: China out to meddle in 2018 election

Taking center stage at the United Nations, President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused China of trying to interfere in the upcoming U.S. congressional elections because it opposes his tough trade policies. The White House provided scant evidence of anything akin to the level of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

“They do not want me or us to win because I am the first president ever to challenge China on trade,” Trump said as he chaired the U.N. Security Council for the first time. He made his accusation against the backdrop of the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the last election to help him and amid concerns that this November’s elections also could be vulnerable.

Asked later what evidence he had, Trump said there was “plenty” but didn’t provide details. Instead, he zeroed in on China’s propaganda efforts to flood the heartland with ads and statements against Trump’s hundreds of billions of dollars in punishing tariffs

Trump added: “I don’t like it when they attack our farmers and I don’t like it when they put out false messages. But beside that, we learned that they are trying to meddle in our elections and we’re not going to let that happen just as we’re not going to let that happen with Russia.”

“We do not and will not interfere in any countries’ domestic affairs,” said Foreign Minister Wang Yi. “We refuse to accept any unwarranted accusations against China, and we call on other countries to also observe the purposes of the U.N. charter and not interfere in other countries’ internal affairs.”

President Donald Trump addresses the United Nations Security Council during the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly, at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018. Left is United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

A senior Trump administration official who briefed reporters about Trump’s comments said China was stepping up covert and overt activities to punish those who support Trump’s tough trade stance and interfere in the political system. The only specifics given by the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, were that China is hurting farmers and workers in states and districts that voted for Trump.

The official said China stifles free speech on U.S. campuses and punishes or rewards businesses, think tanks, movie studios and political candidates for criticizing or supporting Chinese politics. The official added that more information would be declassified in coming days and that Vice President Mike Pence was expected to speak on the issue next week.

Democrats on the House intelligence committee requested information from the Trump administration on the Chinese efforts.

Trump leveled his charge against China amid a whirlwind day of diplomacy at the United Nations, where he had meetings with Japan’s Shinzo Abe, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Britain’s Theresa May. Alongside Netanyahu, Trump offered his most explicit endorsement yet of the two-state solution to bring an end to the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The president also used his moment chairing the Security Council meeting on nuclear proliferation to issue a strong warning to nuclear-aspirant Iran, which he deemed the “world’s leading sponsor of terror” fueling “conflict around the region and far beyond.”

Trump, in his meeting with Abe, warned China again that “they can’t get involved with our elections,” strong rhetoric that stood in stark contrast to his reluctance to acknowledge or condemn Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies and refused to chastise Russia’s Vladimir Putin during their summer summit in Helsinki.

There is extensive evidence linking Russia to attempts to penetrate U.S. elections systems and to influence U.S. voters. Facebook announced in July that it had uncovered “sophisticated” efforts, possibly linked to Russia, to influence U.S. politics on its platforms. Thirty-two accounts were removed from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in “coordinated” political behavior and appeared to be fake. Nearly 300,000 people followed at least one of the accounts.

Microsoft also said it had discovered that a fake domain had been set up as the landing page for phishing attacks by a hacking group believed to have links to Russian intelligence. A Microsoft spokesman said Monday that additional analysis had confirmed that the attempted attacks occurred in late 2017 and targeted multiple accounts associated with the offices of two legislators running for re-election.

With the elections less than two months away, U.S. intelligence and election-protection officials have not cited any specific, credible Chinese efforts.

Officials say China’s cyber-espionage operations targeting U.S. defense and commerce have been formidable, however. And Trump’s claim comes amid an escalation of tensions between Washington and Beijing, spurred by their growing trade dispute.

Each imposed tariff increases on the other’s goods Monday, and Beijing accused the Trump administration of bullying. A Chinese official said China cannot hold talks on ending the trade dispute while the U.S. “holds a knife” to Beijing’s neck by hiking tariffs. Trump later tweeted out a photo of an advertising insert called “China Watch,” saying China was placing propaganda ads in the Des Moines Register and other papers to make it look like news.

U.S. intelligence officials have said they are not now seeing the intensity of Russian intervention registered in 2016 and are also concerned about activity by China, Iran and North Korea. Trump’s statement caught lawmakers and some national security officials off guard as Beijing has not been singled out as the most worrisome foe.

“I haven’t received any briefing on this and would have if it was a serious threat,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., a member of the House intelligence committee. “If the president really wants to protect elections, there are many bipartisan bills he could support.”

Thomas Rid, a Johns Hopkins cybersecurity expert, said, “I am not aware of any evidence of Chinese interference in the midterm elections.” He added: “Chinese influence operations tend to be more subtle, less public, and business-related.”

China has been accused of interfering in an election before, although not in the United States. Cybersecurity firm Fire Eye released a report in July describing “active compromises of multiple Cambodia entities related to the country’s electoral system,” including the National Election Commission, before the country’s July 29 general elections.

The hackers’ methods matched a Chinese-linked hacking group tied to multiple cyber operations that have breached U.S. defense contractors, universities and engineering and maritime technology development firms.

“I’ve seen zero evidence in our own monitoring work that China is doing anything like that,” said Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec, a Georgia cybersecurity firm, “and none of the people in industry I share threat intelligence with have had a whisper of that.”

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at U.N. Headquarters. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018, at U.N. Headquarters. At right are are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National security adviser John Bolton and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trump: UNGA was ‘laughing with me,’ not at me

President Donald J. Trump is hosting a press conference and taking questions

President Trump’s full news conference

President Trump press conference after day at U.N.

President Trump holds press conference

Steyn: Female reporters don’t need Jim Acosta’s help

Key takeaways from Trump’s marathon press conference

During a rare solo press conference Wednesday spanning an hour and twenty-two minutes, President Trump sounded off on issues including Brett Kavanaugh, Rod Rosenstein, North Korea and peace in the Middle East.

One big thing: Trump said he’s had “a lot of false charges” made against him and called sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh a “big fat con job.” The president declined to respond on whether he believed the accusers, saying Democrats and the third accuser’s lawyer are using the allegations to personally harm Brett Kavanaugh.

On Brett Kavanaugh: Trump says he’s open to “changing [his] mind” about his Supreme Court pick if evidence from Kavanaugh’s upcoming hearing is compelling.

Trump said, when asked if he thought the women accusing Kavanaugh were liars, that he’d see what happens during Thursday’s hearings. “It’s possible they could be convincing.”

In a tense exchange with the president, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Trump to call on a female correspondent during his press conference and answer questions on Kavanaugh.

On Kavanaugh’s public perception: “In this case you’re guilty until proven innocent. I think that is a very, very dangerous standard for our country.”

In continuing his attack on Democrats, Trump said “George Washington would be voted against 100% by Schumer and the con artists.”

“Somebody could come and say, ’30 years ago, 25 years ago, 10 years ago, he did a horrible thing… And honestly, it’s a very dangerous period in our country and it’s being perpetrated by very evil people. Some of them are democrats, I must say, because some of them know that this is a game that they’re playing.”

On whether he’ll watch Kavanaugh’s hearing: “I want to watch. I want to see. I hope can watch. I’m meeting with a lot of countries tomorrow, but I will certainly in some form be able to watch.”

On the fate of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein: When asked if he planned on firing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Trump said “we’ll see,” but his “preference would be to keep him.”

On the media: “I think ABC, CBS, NBC, The [New York] Times, The Washington Post, they’re all going to endorse me, because if they don’t, they’re going out of business. Can you imagine if you didn’t have me?”

On North Korea and Kim Jong-un: “If I wasn’t elected, you’d be in a war….You would’ve had a war and you would’ve lost millions, not thousands, millions of people.”

On United Nations members laughing at him: “That’s fake news, that’s fake news. It was covered that way…They were not laughing at me, they were laughing with me.”

On Middle East negotiations: “If the Israelis and the Palestinians want one state, that’s okay with me. If they want two states, that’s okay with me…I want to see if I can get a deal done so that people don’t get killed anymore.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect the latest developments.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised short-term interest rates for the third time this year.

The U.S. central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) increased its benchmark federal funds rate by a quarter-percentage point, setting a range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent, and continued to forecast one more rate hike in 2018.

The policy-setting board also removed the word “accommodative” from its statement to describe their position on interest rates. The move indicates that the Fed, encouraged by rising inflation and strong U.S. hiring, is inching closer to the end of the current rate-hike cycle.

During a press conference, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the removal of “accommodative” does not signal a change in the Fed’s policy plans. Rather, it indicates that the FOMC is moving in line with its expected path, he said.

Most policymakers expect to hold steady on interest rates sometime in 2020, which would leave the federal funds rate in a range of 3.25 percent to 3.5 percent. The long-run rate is estimated to be 3 percent.

Officials have been rolling back accommodative monetary policies initially employed after the 2008 financial crisis. The Fed has indicated it will continue to gradually raise rates at least through 2019, a strategy used to prevent the economy from growing too fast and keep prices from spiking. The decision to raise rates Wednesday was the eighth hike since 2015. It also began to process of winding down its massive portfolio of government debt and mortgage-backed securities in late 2017.

Investors have expected the Fed to increase the federal funds rate a total of four times this year with the next rate hike likely in December. The Fed forecast an additional three rate increases in 2019 and one in 2020.

Economists believe U.S. economic conditions will allow the Fed to remain on track. The Fed raised its estimate for gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 3.1 percent this year, and it sees unemployment falling to a rate of 3.5 percent in 2019.

Powell said more companies have raised concerns about new import tariffs, but the global trade dispute has yet to impact economic numbers. Widespread tariffs over the long term would be a negative development for the U.S. economy, he added.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow estimate has called for economic growthOpens a New Window. of 4.4 percent in the third quarter, which would mark the second consecutive quarter of gains over 4 percent. In August, wages posted their largest annual gain since 2009, while the unemployment rate remained at 3.9 percent, near its lowest level since 2000.

Fed officials affirmed their outlook that inflation will remain near a target of 2 percent annual growth through 2021. The core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, has hit the central bank’s target three times this year.

Let’s Have A Party Polka – Walter Ostanek, Brian Sklar and Western Senators – Polkarama!

“Beer Barrel Polka” (Roll Out the Barrel) by West Coast Prost!

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2016 Andre Rieu Maastricht, Beer Barrel Polka

There's a garden, what a garden
Only happy faces bloom there
And there's never any room there
For a worry or a gloom there
Oh there's music and there's dancing
And a lot of sweet romancing
When they play the polka
They all get in the swing
Every time they hear that
Everybody feels so
They want to throw their cares away
They all go
Then they hear a rumble on the floor, the floor
It's the big surprise they're waiting for
And all the couples form a ring
For miles around you'll hear them sing
Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun
Roll out the barrel, we've got the blues on the run
Zing boom tararrel, ring out a song of good cheer
Now's the time to roll the barrel, for the gang's all here
Then they hear a rumble on the floor-or-or-or
It's the big surprise they're waiting for
And all the couples they form a ring
For miles around you'll hear them sing
Roll it out, roll it out, roll out the barrel
Sing a song of good cheer
Cause the whole gang is here
Roll it out, roll it out
Let's do the beer barrel polka

Senate Democrats Investigate a New Allegation of Sexual Misconduct, from Brett Kavanaugh’s College Years

As Senate Republicans press for a swift vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats are investigating a new allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. The claim dates to the 1983-84 academic school year, when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale University. The offices of at least four Democratic senators have received information about the allegation, and at least two have begun investigating it. Senior Republican staffers also learned of the allegation last week and, in conversations with The New Yorker, expressed concern about its potential impact on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Soon after, Senate Republicans issued renewed calls to accelerate the timing of a committee vote. The Democratic Senate offices reviewing the allegations believe that they merit further investigation. “This is another serious, credible, and disturbing allegation against Brett Kavanaugh. It should be fully investigated,” Senator Mazie Hirono, of Hawaii, said. An aide in one of the other Senate offices added, “These allegations seem credible, and we’re taking them very seriously. If established, they’re clearly disqualifying.”

The woman at the center of the story, Deborah Ramirez, who is fifty-three, attended Yale with Kavanaugh, where she studied sociology and psychology. Later, she spent years working for an organization that supports victims of domestic violence. The New Yorker contacted Ramirez after learning of her possible involvement in an incident involving Kavanaugh. The allegation was conveyed to Democratic senators by a civil-rights lawyer. For Ramirez, the sudden attention has been unwelcome, and prompted difficult choices. She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said.

In a statement, Kavanaugh wrote, “This alleged event from 35 years ago did not happen. The people who knew me then know that this did not happen, and have said so. This is a smear, plain and simple. I look forward to testifying on Thursday about the truth, and defending my good name—and the reputation for character and integrity I have spent a lifetime building—against these last-minute allegations.”

The White House spokesperson Kerri Kupec said the Administration stood by Kavanaugh. “This 35-year-old, uncorroborated claim is the latest in a coordinated smear campaign by the Democrats designed to tear down a good man. This claim is denied by all who were said to be present and is wholly inconsistent with what many women and men who knew Judge Kavanaugh at the time in college say. The White House stands firmly behind Judge Kavanaugh.”

Ramirez said that, when both she and Kavanaugh were freshmen at Yale, she was invited by a friend on the women’s soccer team to a dorm-room party. She recalled that the party took place in a suite at Lawrance Hall, in the part of Yale known as Old Campus, and that a small group of students decided to play a drinking game together. “We were sitting in a circle,” she said. “People would pick who drank.” Ramirez was chosen repeatedly, she said, and quickly became inebriated. At one point, she said, a male student pointed a gag plastic penis in her direction. Later, she said, she was on the floor, foggy and slurring her words, as that male student and another stood nearby. (Ramirez identified the two male onlookers, but, at her request, The New Yorker is not naming them.)

A third male student then exposed himself to her. “I remember a penis being in front of my face,” she said. “I knew that’s not what I wanted, even in that state of mind.” She recalled remarking, “That’s not a real penis,” and the other students laughing at her confusion and taunting her, one encouraging her to “kiss it.” She said that she pushed the person away, touching it in the process. Ramirez, who was raised a devout Catholic, in Connecticut, said that she was shaken. “I wasn’t going to touch a penis until I was married,” she said. “I was embarrassed and ashamed and humiliated.” She remembers Kavanaugh standing to her right and laughing, pulling up his pants. “Brett was laughing,” she said. “I can still see his face, and his hips coming forward, like when you pull up your pants.” She recalled another male student shouting about the incident. “Somebody yelled down the hall, ‘Brett Kavanaugh just put his penis in Debbie’s face,’ ” she said. “It was his full name. I don’t think it was just ‘Brett.’ And I remember hearing and being mortified that this was out there.”

Ramirez acknowledged that there are significant gaps in her memories of the evening, and that, if she ever presents her story to the F.B.I. or members of the Senate, she will inevitably be pressed on her motivation for coming forward after so many years, and questioned about her memory, given her drinking at the party.

And yet, after several days of considering the matter carefully, she said, “I’m confident about the pants coming up, and I’m confident about Brett being there.” Ramirez said that what has stayed with her most forcefully is the memory of laughter at her expense from Kavanaugh and the other students. “It was kind of a joke,” she recalled. “And now it’s clear to me it wasn’t a joke.”

By his freshman year, Kavanaugh was eighteen, and legally an adult. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kavanaugh swore under oath that as a legal adult he had never “committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature.”

The New Yorker has not confirmed with other eyewitnesses that Kavanaugh was present at the party. The magazine contacted several dozen classmates of Ramirez and Kavanaugh regarding the incident. Many did not respond to interview requests; others declined to comment, or said they did not attend or remember the party. A classmate of Ramirez’s, who declined to be identified because of the partisan battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination, said that another student told him about the incident either on the night of the party or in the next day or two. The classmate said that he is “one-hundred-per-cent sure” that he was told at the time that Kavanaugh was the student who exposed himself to Ramirez. He independently recalled many of the same details offered by Ramirez, including that a male student had encouraged Kavanaugh as he exposed himself. The classmate, like Ramirez, recalled that the party took place in a common room on the first floor in Entryway B of Lawrance Hall, during their freshman year. “I’ve known this all along,” he said. “It’s been on my mind all these years when his name came up. It was a big deal.” The story stayed with him, he said, because it was disturbing and seemed outside the bounds of typically acceptable behavior, even during heavy drinking at parties on campus. The classmate said that he had been shocked, but not necessarily surprised, because the social group to which Kavanaugh belonged often drank to excess. He recalled Kavanaugh as “relatively shy” until he drank, at which point he said that Kavanaugh could become “aggressive and even belligerent.”

Another classmate, Richard Oh, an emergency-room doctor in California, recalled overhearing, soon after the party, a female student tearfully recounting to another student an incident at a party involving a gag with a fake penis, followed by a male student exposing himself. Oh is not certain of the identity of the female student. Ramirez told her mother and sister about an upsetting incident at the time, but did not describe the details to either due to her embarrassment.

Mark Krasberg, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico who was also a member of Kavanaugh and Ramirez’s class at Yale, said Kavanaugh’s college behavior had become a topic of discussion among former Yale students soon after Kavanaugh’s nomination. In one e-mail that Krasberg received in September, the classmate who recalled hearing about the incident with Ramirez alluded to the allegation and wrote that it “would qualify as a sexual assault,” he speculated, “if it’s true.”

One of the male classmates who Ramirez said egged on Kavanaugh denied any memory of the party. “I don’t think Brett would flash himself to Debbie, or anyone, for that matter,” he said. Asked why he thought Ramirez was making the allegation, he responded, “I have no idea.” The other male classmate who Ramirez said was involved in the incident commented, “I have zero recollection.”

In a statement, two of those male classmates who Ramirez alleged were involved in the incident, the wife of a third male student she said was involved, and three other classmates, Dino Ewing, Louisa Garry, and Dan Murphy, disputed Ramirez’s account of events: “We were the people closest to Brett Kavanaugh during his first year at Yale. He was a roommate to some of us, and we spent a great deal of time with him, including in the dorm where this incident allegedly took place. Some of us were also friends with Debbie Ramirez during and after her time at Yale. We can say with confidence that if the incident Debbie alleges ever occurred, we would have seen or heard about it—and we did not. The behavior she describes would be completely out of character for Brett. In addition, some of us knew Debbie long after Yale, and she never described this incident until Brett’s Supreme Court nomination was pending. Editors from the New Yorker contacted some of us because we are the people who would know the truth, and we told them that we never saw or heard about this.”

The former friend who was married to the male classmate alleged to be involved, and who signed the statement, said of Ramirez, “This is a woman I was best friends with. We shared intimate details of our lives. And I was never told this story by her, or by anyone else. It never came up. I didn’t see it; I never heard of it happening.” She said she hadn’t spoken with Ramirez for about ten years, but that the two women had been close all through college, and Kavanaugh had remained part of what she called their “larger social circle.” In an initial conversation with The New Yorker, she suggested that Ramirez may have been politically motivated. Later, she said that she did not know if this was the case.

Ramirez is a registered Democrat, but said that her decision to speak out was not politically motivated and, regarding her views, that she “works toward human rights, social justice, and social change.” Ramirez said that she felt “disappointed and betrayed” by the statements from classmates questioning her allegation, “because I clearly remember people in the room whose names are on this letter.”

Several other classmates said that they believed Ramirez to be credible and honest, and vouched for her integrity. James Roche was roommates with Kavanaugh at the time of the alleged incident and is now the C.E.O. of a software company in San Francisco. “Debbie and I became close friends shortly after we both arrived at Yale,” he said. “She stood out as being exceptionally honest and gentle. I cannot imagine her making this up.” He said that he never witnessed Kavanaugh engage in any sexual misconduct, but did recall him being “frequently, incoherently drunk.” He described Ramirez as a vulnerable outsider. “Is it believable that she was alone with a wolfy group of guys who thought it was funny to sexually torment a girl like Debbie? Yeah, definitely. Is it believable that Kavanaugh was one of them? Yes.” Another acquaintance from college, Jennifer Klaus, similarly said that she considered the allegation plausible, adding, “Debbie’s always been a very truthful, kind—almost to the point of being selfless—individual.” A third classmate, who Ramirez thought had attended the party, said that she was not present at the incident. The former student, who asked not to be named, said that she also found Ramirez credible.

Former students described an atmosphere at Yale at the time in which alcohol-fuelled parties often led to behavior similar to that described by Ramirez. “I believe it could have happened,” another classmate who knew both Kavanaugh and Ramirez said. Though she was not aware of Kavanaugh being involved in any specific misconduct, she recalled that heavy drinking was routine and that Ramirez was sometimes victimized and taunted by male students in his social circle. “They were always, like, ‘Debbie’s here!,’ and then they’d get into their ‘Lord of the Flies’ thing,” she said. While at Yale, Kavanaugh became a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, or “DKE,” which several students said was known for its wild and, in the view of some critics, misogynistic parties. Kavanaugh was also a member of an all-male secret society, Truth and Courage, which was popularly known by the nickname “Tit and Clit.”

Ramirez said that she continued to socialize with one of the male classmates who had egged Kavanaugh on during the party during college; she even invited the classmate to her house for Thanksgiving one year, after he told her that he had nowhere to go. She also attended his wedding, years later, as a guest of his wife, and said that she posed for photographs with Kavanaugh, smiling.

Ramirez said that she remained silent about the matter and did not fully confront her memories about it for years because she blamed herself for drinking too much. “It was a story that was known, but it was a story I was embarrassed about,” she said. More recently, she has begun to reassess what happened. “Even if I did drink too much, any person observing it, would they want their daughter, their granddaughter, with a penis in their face, while they’re drinking that much?” she said. “I can say that at fifty-three, but when I was nineteen or twenty I was vulnerable. I didn’t know better.” Reflecting on the incident now, she said she considers Kavanaugh’s male classmates culpable. “They’re accountable for not stopping this,” she said. However, “What Brett did is worse.” She added, “What does it mean, that this person has a role in defining women’s rights in our future?”

As Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings became a national story, the discussions among Ramirez and Kavanaugh’s classmates took on heightened urgency, eventually spreading to news organizations and to the Senate. Senate aides from Ramirez’s home state of Colorado alerted a lawyer, Stanley Garnett, a former Democratic district attorney in Boulder, who currently represents her. Ramirez ultimately decided to begin telling her story publicly, before others did so for her. “I didn’t want any of this,” she said. “But now I have to speak.”

Ramirez said that she hoped her story would support that of Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who has raised an allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh that bears several similarities to Ramirez’s claim. Like Ramirez, Ford said that Kavanaugh was involved in sexual misconduct at a party while drunk and egged on by a male friend. In July, she sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein alleging that, at a party in the summer of 1982, when she was fifteen and Kavanaugh was seventeen and in high school, Kavanaugh pushed her into a bedroom, locked the door, pinned her to a bed, and covered her mouth to stop her screams as he attempted to pull off her clothes. Details of Ford’s allegation were initially made public by The New Yorker, which did not name her at the time. Subsequently, she disclosed her name in an interview with the Washington Post. In her letter, Ford said that during the incident she feared that Kavanaugh might inadvertently kill her. She alleged that a male friend and Georgetown Prep classmate of Kavanaugh’s, Mark Judge, was present in the room, alternately urging Kavanaugh to “go for it” and to “stop.” Kavanaugh has denied the allegation.

Ford’s allegation has made Judge a potentially pivotal witness for Kavanaugh. Judge told The New Yorker that he had “no recollection” of such an incident. Judge, who is a conservative writer, later gave an interview to The Weekly Standard in which he called Ford’s allegation “just absolutely nuts,” adding, “I never saw Brett act that way.” Asked by the interviewer whether he could remember any “sort of rough-housing with a female student back in high school” that might have been “interpreted differently by parties involved,” Judge told the publication, “I can’t. I can recall a lot of rough-housing with guys.” He added, “I don’t remember any of that stuff going on with girls.”

After seeing Judge’s denial, Elizabeth Rasor, who met Judge at Catholic University and was in a relationship with him for about three years, said that she felt morally obligated to challenge his account that “ ‘no horseplay’ took place at Georgetown Prep with women.” Rasor stressed that “under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t reveal information that was told in confidence,” but, she said, “I can’t stand by and watch him lie.” In an interview with The New Yorker, she said, “Mark told me a very different story.” Rasor recalled that Judge had told her ashamedly of an incident that involved him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman. Rasor said that Judge seemed to regard it as fully consensual. She said that Judge did not name others involved in the incident, and she has no knowledge that Kavanaugh participated. But Rasor was disturbed by the story and noted that it undercut Judge’s protestations about the sexual innocence of Georgetown Prep. (Barbara Van Gelder, an attorney for Judge, said that he “categorically denies” the account related by Rasor. Van Gelder said that Judge had no further comment.)

Another woman who attended high school in the nineteen-eighties in Montgomery County, Maryland, where Georgetown Prep is located, also refuted Judge’s account of the social scene at the time, sending a letter to Ford’s lawyers saying that she had witnessed boys at parties that included Georgetown Prep students engaging in sexual misconduct. In an interview, the woman, who asked to have her name withheld for fear of political retribution, recalled that male students “would get a female student blind drunk” on what they called “jungle juice”—grain alcohol mixed with Hawaiian Punch—then try to take advantage of her. “It was disgusting,” she said. “They treated women like meat.”

Kavanaugh’s attitude toward women has come to play a central role in his confirmation process. His backers have offered portrayals of his strong support for girls and women. When Kavanaugh accepted Trump’s nomination to the Court at a White House event in July, he and Trump both stressed that he had numerous female law clerks, and that he coached his young daughters’ school basketball teams. During his Senate confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh at one point ushered into the Senate hearing room a large group of school girls whose basketball games he had coached, showcasing his warm and supportive relationships with women. Earlier this month, on the same day The New Yorkerreported details of Ford’s allegation, Republicans on the Judiciary Committee released a letter from sixty-five women defending the nominee. On Monday, CNN reported that the White House has been contacting many of those women again, hoping to present their perspective to the media, perhaps as part of a group news conference.

The very different portrayals of Kavanaugh and his social scene offered by Ford, and now Ramirez, come at a crucial point in the confirmation process. On Friday, the Republican Senator Charles Grassley, of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a public ultimatum to Ford, announcing that he would schedule the committee’s vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation for Monday morning if she did not respond to an invitation to testify by a deadline, set first for Friday night and then for Saturday afternoon. Lawyers for Ford had pushed back, demanding an outside investigation of Ford’s allegation by the F.B.I. before she offered testimony, and said that she needed additional time to prepare. The White House and F.B.I. have declined to pursue that F.B.I. investigation, though Grassley has stated that his office has conducted its own inquiries into the matter. On Sunday, Ford’s lawyer and the committee reached an agreement for her to testify on Thursday.

In a statement, Kavanaugh’s attorneys Beth Wilkinson and Alexandra Walsh wrote, “Judge Kavanaugh fully and honestly answered the Judiciary Committee’s questions over multiple days only to have unsubstantiated allegations come out when a vote on his confirmation was imminent. What matters in situations like these are facts and evidence.” Like Kavanaugh, they said that, on Thursday, “testimony and evidence will confirm what Judge Kavanaugh has made clear all along—that he did not commit the sexual assault Dr. Blasey Ford describes.”

The issue has proved to be politically delicate for the White House. Last week, Vanity Fair reported that White House officials were concerned about additional allegations against Kavanaugh emerging, and cited a source who claimed that Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter and adviser, had urged him to withdraw Kavanaugh’s nomination. Trump has defended Kavanaugh in the wake of Ford’s allegations. In a series of tweets on Friday, he sought to undermine her account of events, writing, “I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents.” He described Kavanaugh as “a fine man,” who he wrote was “under assault by radical left wing politicians.”

Ramirez said that witnessing the attempts to discredit Ford had made her frightened to share her own story, which she knew would be attacked due to the gaps in her memory and her level of inebriation at the time. “I’m afraid how this will all come back on me,” she said. Her attorney, Garnett, said that he and Ramirez had not yet decided when and how she would convey the details of her allegation to the Senate Judiciary Committee and whether new counsel would represent her in Washington. “We’re carefully evaluating what the appropriate next steps would be,” he said. They both said that an F.B.I. investigation of the matter was merited. “I do believe an F.B.I. investigation of this kind of character-related information would be appropriate, and would be an effective way to relay the information to the committee,” Garnett said. Of Ramirez, he added, “She’s as careful and credible a witness as I’ve encountered in thirty-six years of practicing law.” Ramirez said that she hoped an investigation could be carried out before the committee voted on Kavanaugh’s nomination. “At least look at it,” she said of her claim. “At least check it out.”

Hearsay is the legal term for certain statements—offered as evidence during a trial or hearing for the purpose of attempting to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statements—that were not made while testifying at the trial or hearing itself. In general, the witness will attempt to make a statement such as, “Sally told me Tom was in town” (for the purpose of proving that Tom was indeed “in town”), as opposed to “I saw Tom in town.” Hearsay is not allowed as evidence in the United States, unless one of nearly thirty[1] exceptions applies to the particular statement being made.

The hearsay rule is an analytic rule of evidence that defines hearsay and provides for both exceptions and exemptions from that rule. There is no all-encompassing definition of hearsay in the United States. However, most evidentiary codes defining hearsay adopt verbatim the rule as laid out in the Federal Rules of Evidence, which generally defines hearsay as an out-of-court statement introduced to prove the truth of the matter asserted. “Out-of-court” is shorthand for any statement other than one made under oath and in front of the factfinder (the jury, or the judge in a bench trial) during the same proceeding in which it is being offered in evidence. “Matter asserted” means the matter asserted in the statement offered into evidence, not the matter “asserted” by the party offering the evidence. Evidence typically is introduced to support not just one proposition but a series of propositions, linked together in an inferential chain. If any one of the propositions in the inferential chain is “the truth of the matter asserted” in the out-of-court statement, the evidence falls within the traditional definition of hearsay. The declarant is the person that makes the out-of-court statement—not the person bringing the action (lawsuit).

Note: In hearsay law, “witness” means someone who testifies under oath, from the witness stand and “declarant” refers to someone who makes a statement of any kind, whether or not under oath, and whether in or out of court (according to the Federal Rules of Evidence).

In everyday law, “witness” means someone who sees or observes something and “declarant” means someone who says something under oath. The distinctions in the definitions of these words is important to consider in hearsay law.

F.R.E. 801: Hearsay is a statement that the declarant does not make while testifying at the current trial or hearing; and a party offers that statement in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. (F.R.E. refers to the Federal Rules of Evidence.)

Historically, the rule against hearsay was aimed at prohibiting the use of another person’s statement, as equivalent to testimony by the witness to the fact. Unless the second person is brought to testify in court where they may be placed under oath and cross-examined, the factfinder cannot gauge the witness’ credibility.

Theory

The theory of the rule excluding hearsay is that assertions made by human beings are often unreliable; such statements are often insincere, subject to flaws in memory and perception, or infected with errors in narration at the time they are given. Furthermore, someone testifying in court regarding another’s out-of-court statement may have misheard or misremembered that statement, in addition to possibly having misinterpreted the speaker’s sincerity, etc. The law therefore finds it necessary to subject this form of evidence to “scrutiny or analysis calculated to discover and expose in detail its possible weaknesses, and thus to enable the tribunal (judge or jury) to estimate it at no more than its actual value”.[2]

Three tests are calculated to expose possible weaknesses in a statement:

Assertions must be taken under oath

Assertions must be made in front of the tribunal (judge or jury)

Assertions must be subject to cross-examination.

Assertions not subject to these three tests are (with some exceptions) prohibited insofar as they are offered testimonially (for the truth of what they assert).

Federal Rules of Evidence

The Federal Rules of Evidence (See Article VIII) provide a general definition of hearsay as a “statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted”. Subject to two classes of “exemptions”, this definition classifies a statement as hearsay if the statement meets two requirements: (1) the statement must be extrajudicial (i.e. not made by this witness in this proceeding). (2) The statement must be offered to prove the truth of what the statement asserts if anything.

However, as noted below, the Federal Rules of Evidence also provide two specific categories of exemptions of certain kinds of statements from this rule; statements in these categories are defined as “Non-hearsay”.

Typically, one can classify a statement as hearsay under the Federal Rules of Evidence using a three-step analysis. A statement will be considered hearsay if it is:

An assertive statement

Made by an out-of-court declarant

Is being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted therein.

An “assertive statement” is generally defined as the intentional communication of fact. Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, an assertive statement can be oral, written, or non-verbal conduct if it was intended to be an assertion. However, any verbal or non-verbal conduct that was not intended to communicate a fact will not be considered an assertive statement.

In order for the statement to satisfy the “out-of-court declarant” element of hearsay, very simply stated, the statement must have been made outside of the courtroom that the present proceeding is taking place in—meaning that if the statement was made in another courtroom, it is still made by an “out-of-court” declarant. (However, some “out-of-court” statements under oath may still be admissible as a declaration against interest.)

Lastly, if a statement is being offered for its truth—meaning that its relevance depends upon the jury believing the substance of the statement—then it is being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted therein. If a statement is relevant for any other purpose other than proving the truth of the matter asserted therein, then the statement will not be considered hearsay under the Federal Rules of Evidence.

Application

Generally in common law courts the “hearsay rule” applies, which says that a trier of fact (judge or jury) cannot be informed of a hearsay statement unless it meets certain strict requirements. However, the rules for admissibility are more relaxed in court systems based on the civil law system. In the civil law system, the courts, whether consisting only of judges or featuring a jury, have wide latitude to appreciate the evidence brought before them.

[Note: Louisiana, a civil-law jurisdiction, does not share the above referenced feature generally found in civil-law jurisdictions. With few exceptions, Louisiana follows rules predicated upon the Federal Rules of Evidence.]

Furthermore, even in common-law systems, the hearsay rule only applies to actual trials. Hearsay is admissible as evidence in many other judicial proceedings, such as grand jury deliberations, probation hearings, parole revocation hearings, and proceedings before administrative bodies.

In criminal law, Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), reformulated the standard for determining when the admission of hearsay statements in criminal cases is permitted under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Crawford gives enhanced protection to defendants when the hearsay offered against them is testimonial in nature. When a statement is deliberately accusatory, or when the declarant knows that the statement is likely to be used in the prosecution of the defendant for a crime, the need for face-to-face confrontation is at its highest. When statements are directly accusatory, the defense needs an opportunity to explore the accuser’s motives. Where statements are the product of police interrogation, there is a need to ensure that the testimony is not the product of improper coercion or intimidation.

Ohio v. Roberts, 448 U.S. 56 (1980), set forth a two-pronged test in order for hearsay to be admissible against a criminal defendant: (1) the declarant generally must be shown to be unavailable; and (2) the statement must have been made under circumstances providing sufficient “indicia of reliability”. With respect to the second prong, a reliability determination may assume that hearsay is sufficiently reliable for constitutional purposes if it satisfies a “firmly rooted” hearsay exception. In practice this means that lower courts need to make reliability determinations only for hearsay that is offered under a “catchall” exception, such as Federal Rule of Evidence Rule 807, or under new or non-traditional hearsay exceptions that are not “firmly rooted”. However, Crawford v. Washington overruled Ohio v. Roberts.

Common misconceptions

One major misconception about the hearsay rule is that hearsay is never admissible in court. While the general rule is that such evidence is inadmissible, there are many exceptions.

There are two other common misconceptions concerning the hearsay rule. The first is that hearsay applies only to oral statements. The hearsay rule applies to all out-of-court statements whether oral, written or otherwise.[3] The Federal Rules of Evidence defines a statement as an oral or written assertion or nonverbal conduct of a person, if the conduct is intended by the person as an assertion. Even written documents made under oath, such as affidavits or notarized statements, are subject to the ‘hearsay rule’.

The second common misconception is that all out-of-court statements are hearsay. This is not the case. An out of court statement may or may not be hearsay depending on the purpose for which it is offered. If the statement is being offered to prove the truth of what it asserts, then it becomes hearsay. When offered for any other purpose the statement is not hearsay. For example: Witness testifies that yesterday he spoke to Jim (who was in Vermont) on the phone and that Jim made the following statement, “It’s raining in Vermont!” If the attorney is seeking to use this statement to prove that it was in fact raining in Vermont, then it is hearsay. But, if the attorney is seeking to use the statement to prove that the phone lines were working that day, or that Jim had not lost the power of speech, or for any other purpose, then the statement is not being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted, and therefore it is not hearsay.

Consider an additional example:

A police officer, hears cries of “Help, John is trying to kill me!” from inside a house. Believing that there is a crime in progress, the officer kicks the front door down and enters the home to discover the homeowner, John, assaulting a victim, Monica, who is crying and visibly shaking. John is charged with attempted murder. Two separate trials might result from these circumstances.

First, a criminal trial against John, who proclaims his innocence and demands a trial for the criminal charges alleged.

Second, a civil trial in which John sues the police officer for invading his home, wherein the officer will assert that there was just cause to enter the home because he had a genuine belief that a crime was occurring.

In the first trial, the issue is whether John attempted to kill Monica. The officer is asked to testify to what he heard Monica scream from inside the house: “Help, John is trying to kill me!” This statement would be hearsay. The officer is being asked to testify to what Monica said to prove that John attempted to murder Monica. Unless the attorney can show that this statement falls within an exception to the hearsay rule, the factfinder (the judge or jury) may not consider Monica’s statement (this particular statement, however, would likely be admissible because of “Excited Utterance” and “Present sense impression” exceptions).

In the second trial, however, the issue is not whether John tried to kill Monica but rather whether the officer’s entry into the home was lawful. Here, the statement is not being offered to prove that John tried to kill Monica, but it instead is being offered to prove that the officer had probable cause to enter the home. Whether John was actually trying to kill Monica is irrelevant to the issue at hand; what matters is whether the officer believed that Monica was in danger and whether it had been necessary to kick down the door to investigate further. Monica’s statement is evidence to that effect because a reasonable person, having heard Monica’s cries for help, would fear for her safety.

A person’s own prior statements can be hearsay. For example, suppose a person is testifying on the stand. In relation to an automobile accident where a blue truck struck a yellow car, the witness testifies, “I told the police officer the truck was blue” to establish the color of the car (as opposed to whether he had lied to police, or the officer had falsified the witness reports). This statement is an out-of-court statement offered for the purpose of proving the truth of the matter asserted, and is therefore hearsay. The witness is testifying about what someone said in the past. The fact that it is his own statement does not change the hearsay nature of the statement.

If the witness testifies, “The truck that struck the yellow car was blue,” the statement is not hearsay. The witness is not testifying about a past statement. He is not relating in court what someone outside of court said, but is merely relating an observation.

The rule that a person’s own statements can be considered hearsay may be confusing. By “forgetting” who is testifying on the stand and merely looking for statements like “I said”, “I wrote”, “I testified before that”, “The document says”, and the like, most confusion can be eliminated.

In this example, simple logic tells that there is a difference: while the first statement may be true, it does not assert anything about the truth of the matter stated. The witness may have told the officer that the truck was blue, but that may not have been the truth; he might have been mistaken or lying.

Non-hearsay under the Federal Rules

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, two broad categories of statements are exempt from the rule’s general definition. These are referred to as hearsay “exemptions” and are of two types:

Admission by a party-opponent[

An admission by a party-opponent is a statement offered against another party that meets one of five criteria:

The party against whom the statement is being offered is also the declarant of that statement either personally or in a representative capacity.

The party against whom the statement is being offered manifested an adoption or belief in the statement’s truth.

The party against whom the statement is being offered authorized the declarant to make the statement.

The statement is made by an agent of the party against whom it is being offered and concerns a matter within the scope of the employment and is made during the course of that employment.

The declarant was a co-conspirator of the party against whom the statement is being offered and the statement is in furtherance of their conspiracy.

The theory underlying this “exemption” is derived from the nature of the hearsay rule itself. The hearsay rule operates to exclude extrajudicial assertions as untrustworthy because they cannot be tested by cross-examination. When an assertion is offered into evidence against the defendant and the defendant objects, “hearsay”, the defendant is in essence saying “I object to this statement as untrustworthy because I am not afforded an opportunity to cross-examine the person who made it. How can we trust what he said?” But what if the defendant is the person who made the statement that is now being offered against him? To object, “hearsay” in this circumstance would be as absurd as to argue, “This statement is unreliable because I cannot cross-examine myself; therefore, how can I trust what I said?” In this situation the objection of the Hearsay rule falls away, because the very basis of the rule is lacking, viz. the need and prudence of affording an opportunity of cross-examination. Another way of looking at it is that a defendant who faces his own statement being used against him has an opportunity to cross-examine himself – he can take the witness stand and explain his prior assertion, so the rule is satisfied.

Prior statement of a witness

A prior statement is not hearsay if the person who made the statement (the “declarant”) is currently testifying and is subject to cross-examination at the current trial/hearing/proceeding/deposition, and

(A) the prior statement is inconsistent with the declarant’s testimony at the current trial/hearing/proceeding/deposition and the prior statement was given under oath at a prior trial/hearing/proceeding/deposition—in which case it may be used both for impeachment and substantively; or

(B) the prior statement is consistent with the declarant’s testimony, and is offered to rebut a charge that the declarant has made a recent fabrication, or a charge of the declarant’s improper influence or motive, i.e. the declarant’s bias; or

(C) the prior statement was an identification of a person made after perceiving that person.[4]

Exceptions

Some statements are defined as hearsay, but may nevertheless be admissible as evidence in court. These statements relate to exceptions to the general rule on hearsay. Some (but not all) exceptions to the hearsay rule apply only when the declarant is unavailable for testimony at the trial or hearing.

Many of the exceptions listed below are treated more extensively in individual articles.

Excited utterances: Statements relating to startling events or condition made while the declarant was under the stress of excitement caused by the event or condition.[5] This is the exception that may apply to the ‘police officer’ scenario listed above. The victim’s cries of help were made under the stress of a startling event, and the victim is still under the stress of the event, as is evidenced by the victim’s crying and visible shaking. An excited utterance does not have to be made at the same time of the startling event. A statement made minutes, hours or even days after the startling event can be excited utterances, so long as the declarant is still under the stress of the startling event. However, the more time that elapses between a startling event and the declarant’s statement, the more the statements will be looked upon with disfavor.

Present sense impression: A statement expressing the declarant’s impression of a condition existing at the time the statement was made, such as “it’s hot in here” or “we’re going really fast.” Unlike an excited utterance, it need not be made in response to a startling event. Instead, it is admissible because it is a condition that the witness would likely have been experiencing at the same time as the declarant, and would instantly be able to corroborate.

Declarations of present state of mind: Much like a present-sense impression describes the outside world, declarant’s statement to the effect of “I am angry!” or “I am Napoleon!” will be admissible to prove that the declarant was indeed angry, or did indeed believe himself to be Napoleon at that time. Used in cases where the declarant’s mental state is at issue. Present-state-of-mind statements are also used as circumstantial evidence of subsequent acts committed by the declarant, like his saying, “I’m gonna go buy some groceries and get the oil changed in my car on my way home from work.” Another exception is statements made in the course of medical treatment, i.e., statements made by a patient to a medical professional to help in diagnosis and treatment. Any statements contained therein that attribute fault or causation to an individual will generally not be admissible under this exception.

Business records exception: business records created during the ordinary course of business are considered reliable and can usually be brought in under this exception if the proper foundation is laid when the records are introduced into evidence. Depending on which jurisdiction the case is in, either the records custodian or someone with knowledge of the records must lay a foundation for the records, however. The use of police records, especially as substantive evidence against the accused in a criminal trial, is severely restricted under the Business Records exception. Typically, only generalized evidence about police procedure is admissible under this exception, and not facts about a specific case. For example, John is stopped for speeding 70 miles per hour in a 50-mile-per-hour zone. The officer, who determined John’s speed with radar, records the speed in an incident report. He also calibrates and runs a diagnostic on his radar every day prior to beginning his shift. He records this in a log. At trial, the report itself would not be admissible as it pertained to the facts of the case. However, the officer’s daily log in which he records his calibration and the daily diagnostics of his radar unit would be admissible under the business records exception.

Prior inconsistent statements: Many states have departed from the approach of the federal rules with respect to inconsistent statements. Under current law in these jurisdictions, a prior inconsistent statement made by a witness (even when not made under oath at a judicial proceeding or deposition) is admissible as substantive evidence provided the declarant signed the statement.[6]

Other exceptions, declarant’s availability immaterial: In the United States Federal Rules of Evidence, separate exceptions are made for public records, family records, and records in ancient documents of established authenticity. When regular or public records are kept, the absence of such records may also be used as admissible hearsay evidence.

Dying declarations and other statements under belief of impending death: often depicted in movies; the police officer asks the person on his deathbed, “Who attacked you?” and the victim replies, “The butler did it.” In reality, case law has ruled out this exception in criminal law, because the witness should always be cross examined in court; however, there is an exception to this exception for criminal cases: even though generally inadmissible to matters relating to criminal law, the exception has been carved out for actions relating to homicide cases [Fed. R. Evid. 804(b)(2)].

Declaration against interest: A statement that would incriminate or expose the declarant to liability to such an extent that it can be assumed he would only make such a statement if it were true. It would be assumed that one would lie to further one’s interests, so a statement against his interests (such as exposing oneself to criminal or civil liability) likely would not be made unless it were true.[7]

Admission of guilt: if a declarant makes a statement, verbal or otherwise, as an admission of guilt of the matter at hand, that statement is admissible. Unlike other cases of declarations against interest, the declarant in this situation need not be unavailable.[8]

Prior testimony: if the testimony was given under oath and the party against whom the testimony is being proffered was present and had the opportunity to cross examine the witness at that time. Often used to enter depositions into the court record at trial.

Forfeiture by wrongdoing: the party against whom the statement is now offered (1) intentionally made the declarant unavailable; (2) with intent to prevent declarant’s testimony; (3) by wrongdoing.

Theories supporting exceptions

In some jurisdictions, such as Canada, the limited exceptions format to the rule have been replaced by a more general theory of exceptions to the hearsay rule that allows courts to decide when documents, testimony or other evidentiary proof can be used that might not otherwise be considered.

The underlying rationale for many of the hearsay exceptions is that the circumstances of a particular statement make them reliable enough to be heard by a trier of fact. Statements made during the course of medical treatment, for example, are considered reliable because patients typically have little reason to lie to a doctor while they are being treated, and will generally be accurate in describing their ailments.

This, of course, is not always true. Patients do sometimes lie to their doctors (to get painkillers to which they are not entitled, for example). Hearsay exceptions do not mandate that a trier of fact (the jury or, in non-jury trials, the judge) accept the hearsay statement as being true. Hearsay exceptions mean only that the trier of fact will be informed of the hearsay statement and will be allowed to consider it when deciding on a verdict in the case. The jury is free to disregard a hearsay statement if the jury does not believe it. The hearsay rule controls only what out-of-court statements a trier of fact gets to consider in deciding a case, not how they consider the out-of-court statements.

Hearsayevidence is “an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of matter asserted”. In certain courts, hearsay evidence is inadmissible (the “Hearsay Evidence Rule”) unless an exception to the Hearsay Rule applies.

For example, to prove Tom was in town, the attorney asks a witness, “What did Susan tell you about Tom being in town?” Since the witness’s answer will rely on an out-of-court statement that Susan made, if Susan is not available for cross-examination, and it is to prove the truth that Tom was in town, it is hearsay. A justification for the objection is that the person who made the statement is not in court and thus is insulated from cross-examination. Note, however, that if the attorney asking the same question is not trying to prove the truth of the assertion about Tom being in town but the fact that Susan said the specific words, it may be acceptable. For example, it would be acceptable to ask a witness what Susan told them about Tom in a defamation case against Susan because now the witness is asked about the opposing party’s statement that constitutes a verbal act.[1][2]

The hearsay rule does not exclude the evidence if it is an operative fact[clarification needed]. Language of commercial offer and acceptance is also admissible over a hearsay exception because the statements have independent legal significance.

Double hearsay is a hearsay statement that contains another hearsay statement itself. For example, a witness wants to testify that “a very reliable man informed me that Wools-Sampson told him”. The statements of the very reliable man and Wools-Sampson are both hearsay submissions on the part of the witness, and the second hearsay (the statement of Wools-Sampson) depends on the first (the statement of the very reliable man). In a court, both layers of hearsay must be found separately admissible. In this example, the first hearsay also comes from an anonymous source, and the admissibility of an anonymous statement depends upon the discharge of an additional legal burden of proof.

Many jurisdictions that generally disallow hearsay evidence in courts permit the more widespread use of hearsay in non-judicial hearings.

“Hearsay is a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted.”[1] Per Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(a), a statement made by a defendant is admissible as evidence only if it is inculpatory; exculpatory statements made to an investigator are hearsay and therefore may not be admitted as evidence in court, unless the defendant testifies.[3] When an out-of-court statement offered as evidence contains another out-of-court statement it is called double hearsay, and both layers of hearsay must be found separately admissible.[4]

There are several exceptions to the rule against hearsay in U.S. law.[1] Federal Rule of Evidence 803 lists the following:

Marriage, baptismal, and similar certificates, and Family and Property records

Statements in documents affecting an interest in property

Statements in ancient documents the authenticity of which can be established.

Market reports, commercial publications

“Learned treatises”

Reputation concerning personal or family history, boundaries, or general history, or as to character

Judgment of previous conviction, and as to personal, family or general history, or boundaries.[1]

Also, some documents are self-authenticating under Rule 902, such as (1) domestic public documents under seal, (2) domestic public documents not under seal, but bearing a signature of a public officer, (3) foreign public documents, (4) certified copies of public records, (5) official publications, (6) newspapers and periodicals, (7) trade inscriptions and the like, (8) acknowledged documents (i.e. by a notary public), (9) commercial paper and related documents, (10) presumptions under Acts of Congress, (11) certified domestic records of regularly conducted activity, (12) certified foreign records of regularly conducted activity.[1]

England and Wales

In England and Wales, hearsay is generally admissible in civil proceedings,[5] but is only admissible in criminal proceedings if it falls within a statutory or a preserved common law exception,[6] all of the parties to the proceedings agree, or the court is satisfied that it is in the interests of justice that the evidence is admissible.[7]

Section 116 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 provides that, where a witness is unavailable, hearsay is admissible where a) the relevant person is dead; b) the relevant person is unfit to be a witness because of his bodily or mental condition; c) the relevant person is outside the UK and it is not reasonably practicable to secure his attendance; d) the relevant person cannot be found; e) through fear, the relevant person does not give oral evidence in the proceedings and the court gives leave for the statement to be given in evidence.

The two main common law exceptions to the rule that hearsay is inadmissible are res gestae and confessions.

Canada

Hearsay evidence is generally inadmissible in Canada unless it falls within one of the established common law exceptions. As a result of the Supreme Court’s decision in R. v. Khan and subsequent cases, hearsay evidence that does not fall within the established exceptions can be admitted where established that such evidence is both “necessary and reliable”. Additionally, hearsay evidence that would otherwise be admissible as an exception can nonetheless be excluded if it is not necessary and reliable, as in R. v. Starr.

Australia

The rules of evidence differ among the states and the Commonwealth; the Commonwealth, Victoria, NSW, Tasmania, and the ACT all share similar hearsay provisions in their Uniform Evidence Acts;[8] the other states rely upon the common law. As elsewhere, hearsay is usually inadmissible, outside of interlocutory proceedings, unless it falls within one of the hearsay exceptions.

Uniform Evidence Act

Hearsay is dealt with under Part 3.2. There are several local peculiarities with its treatment. s 59 defines the ‘fact’ of a hearsay statement as being something ‘that it can reasonably be supposed that the person intended to assert by the representation’. Hearsay rule confines the potentially broad number of assertions it might cover by this broad definition of representation to only intended representations adduced to prove existence of the asserted facts. In Lee v Queen,[9] the term ‘representation’ was used to apply to statements and to conduct and was used to encompass all those statements or that conduct would convey to the observer.

The extraordinary s 60 allows a statement’s use as hearsay if it is admitted for a non-hearsay purpose, although the application of s 60 may be limited by s 137 (which is essentially the discretion formerly known as Christie.) s 72 excepts ‘evidence of a representation about … the traditional laws and customs of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander group’, although this arguably would have fallen into the ‘public right’ exception at common law. Confessions are called ‘admissions’ by the Act (which quite foreseeably led to the confusion whereby counsel apply for the ‘admission of the admission’.) They are dealt with separately under Part 3.4, which lifts the hearsay rule. The Act’s dictionary defines ‘admission’ broadly enough to include anything that might be used against the accused. The other sections in the Part for the most part codify, roughly, the common-law rules.

Malaysia

In Malaysia, hearsay evidence is generally not allowed. However, the Evidence Act 1950 permitted a few exceptions, such as section 6, 73A, etc.

New Zealand

Hearsay evidence is covered by sections 16-22 of the Evidence Act 2006. Previously inadmissible, the 1989 decision of the Court of Appeal in R v Baker created a common law exception to the hearsay rule based on reliability, which was codified in the Evidence Act. Pursuant to s 4(1) of the Act, a hearsay statement is a statement made by someone other than a witness (in the proceedings) that is offered to prove the truth of its contents. Under section 17 of this Act a hearsay statement is generally not admissible in any court proceeding. Though section 18 states when a hearsay statement may be able to be given in court. This is when the statement is reliable, the statement maker is unavailable to be called as a witness or it would provide undue expense and delay if that person was required to be a witness. There are also a number of specific exceptions such as statements in business records. Other exceptions include state of mind evidence (see R v Blastland) and whether the statement is tendered to prove the fact it was uttered or made, rather than to prove the truth of its contents (see DPP v Subramaniam).

Norway

Even if Norway has a maxim of “free evidence” (any statement, object, forensics or other matters that may apply) to be entered and admitted in court, hearsay is in conflict with the defense cousel’s or prosecution’s ability to cross examine, as the witness who relayed the original statement is not present in court. In practice, hearsay is then not allowed.

Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, hearsay evidence is generally not allowed. However, the Evidence Ordinance recognizes a few exceptions such as res gestae (recognised under Section 6) and common intention (recognised under Section 10)and some other exceptions from section 17 to section 39. Some other exceptions are provided by case law (see Subramaniam v. DPP [1956] 1 WLR 956 (PC)).

Sweden

Sweden allows hearsay evidence.[10] This has to be trustworthy. For example, a police officer can testify what another person said.

Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, hearsay is generally admissible in civil proceedings under the statutory regime.[11] Section 46 of the Evidence Ordinance provides that evidence shall not be excluded on the ground that it is hearsay in civil proceedings unless: the party against whom the evidence is to be adduced objects to the admission of the evidence; as well as: the court is satisfied, having regard to the circumstances of the case, that the exclusion of the evidence is not prejudicial to the interests of justice. Sections 47A to 51 provides for safeguards in relation to hearsay evidence admissible under section 46 so as to avoid abuses of the general admission:

the obligation to give notice and particulars to other parties when proposing to adduce hearsay evidence (Section 47A);

the power to call witness for cross-examination on hearsay statement with the leave of the court (Section 48);

consideration relevant to weighing of hearsay evidence (Section 49);

competence and credibility (Section 50); and,

previous statement of witness (Section 51).

The courts shall draw inferences from the circumstances as to the weight attached to hearsay evidence, in particular:[12]

whether it would have been reasonable and practicable for the party by whom the evidence was adduced to have produced the maker of the original statement as a witness;

whether the original statement was made contemporaneously with the occurrence or existence of the matters stated;

whether the evidence involves multiple hearsay;

whether any person involved had any motive to conceal or misrepresent matters;

whether the original statement was an edited account, or was made in collaboration with another or for a particular purpose;

whether the circumstances in which the evidence is adduced as hearsay are such as to suggest an attempt to prevent proper evaluation of its weight;

whether or not the evidence adduced by the party is consistent with any evidence previously adduced by the party.

The new civil regime also preserves a number of common law exceptions that are unaffected by the statutory safeguards except for the section 47A safeguard relating to notice.[13] In criminal proceedings, the law relating to hearsay has not been substantially changed in Hong Kong, and the common law regime remains the rules followed by the Hong Kong criminal courts. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible in all criminal cases except for common law and statutory exemptions, which include: admissions and confessions, dying declarations, declarations in the course of duty, declarations against interest, co-conspirator’s rule, statements in public documents, out-of-court statements, evidence in former proceedings, and Res gestae.

“Beer Barrel Polka“, also known as “The Barrel Polka” and “Roll Out the Barrel“, is a song which became popular worldwide during World War II. The music was composed by the Czech musician Jaromír Vejvoda in 1927.[1]Eduard Ingriš wrote the first arrangement of the piece, after Vejvoda came upon the melody and sought Ingriš’s help in refining it. At that time, it was played without lyrics as “Modřanská polka” (“Polka of Modřany“). Its first text was written later (in 1934) by Václav Zeman – with the title “Škoda lásky”[2] (“Wasted Love”).

During World War II, versions in many other languages were created and the song was popular among soldiers, regardless of their allegiances. On VE Day, 9 May 1945, Humphrey Lyttelton played it standing on a handcart outside Buckingham Palace, a performance that could be heard in the BBC broadcast from the victory celebrations.[4][5] It was claimed many times that the song was written in the country where it had just become a hit. Its actual composer was not widely known until after the war.

Bobby Vinton version

Bobby Vinton recorded “Beer Barrel Polka” in 1975. The song was released as the follow up single to his multi-million selling “My Melody of Love” and reached number 33 on the Billboard (his last Top 40 hit there) and number 45 on the Cashbox Top 40 hit charts. The success of the single, which was particularly popular on jukeboxes, led to its inclusion on Vinton’s Heart of Hearts album in 1975.

It is sung in the final scene of the Rumpole of the Bailey television episode, “Rumpole and the Alternative Society” (1977).

It was played by Amanda McBroom as Eleanor Carlyle on piano at officers’ club in M*A*S*H season 9 episode 20 (second part of “That’s Show Biz”) after she says that “Even Dvorak and Brahms wrote folk dances” to Major Winchester.

At San Jose Giants home games, a batter from the opposing team is designated the “beer batter.” If the San Jose pitcher strikes out that batter, beer is half price in the beer only lines for the 15 minutes immediately following the strike out. The beer batter promotion is in effect only for the first six innings of the game. The PA system plays Beer Barrel Polka whenever the beer batter comes to the plate and after every strike during the beer batter’s at-bat (through the first six innings). After the sixth inning, the beer batter becomes the apple juice batter and if he strikes out, fans get half-priced Martinelli’s apple juice.

In the Family Matters episode, “Chick-a-Boom”, Steve Urkel‘s creates a powder that explodes up when the song “Roll out the Barrel” is played.

In the Hogan’s Heroes season 1 episode “Top Hat, White Tie and Bomb Sights”, Colonel Hogan convinces the Luftwaffe that he knows the details of the Norden Bombsight and has pro-Nazi leanings. To firm up the subterfuge, Colonel Hogan describes a vacuum cleaner named “The Norden” in front of a wiretap with the crew singing “Beer Barrel Polka” loudly, interrupting lines of dialog. Commandant Klink believes the performance because the various details not covered up by singing appear to describe a bombsight.

6PM Special Report w/ Bret Baier 9/24/2018 – September 24 2018

The Five’ previews Fox News’ exclusive Kavanaugh interview

Kavanaugh: ‘I will not be intimidated into withdrawing’

Brett Kavanaugh on Monday said he will “not be intimidated into withdrawing” from his Supreme Court nomination after a second woman came forward with a sexual misconduct allegation against him.

Kavanaugh sent a letter on Monday to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) — the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, respectively —saying the accusations against him are “smears, pure and simple.”

“They debase our public discourse. But they are also a threat to any man or woman who wishes to serve our country. Such grotesque and obvious character assassination—if allowed to succeed—will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from service,” Kavanaugh said in the letter toGrassley and Feinstein.

“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process. The coordinated effort to destroy my good name will not drive me out. The vile threats of violence against my family will not drive me out. The last-minute character assassination will not succeed,” Kavanaugh continued.

His letter to Grassley comes after The New Yorker reported that Senate Democrats are investigating a sexual misconduct allegation dating back to Kavanaugh’s freshman year at Yale University.

Deborah Ramirez says Kavanaugh exposed himself in front of her during a dorm party at Yale. She told The New Yorker that Kavanaugh thrust his penis in her face, causing her to touch it without her consent when she pushed him away.

Kavanaugh was already facing a sexual assault allegation from Christine Blasey Ford, who says that at a high school party in the early 1980s Kavanaugh pinned her down to a bed and tried to remove her clothing.

Kavanaugh and Ford are both scheduled to testify before the Judiciary Committee on Thursday. Kavanaugh has denied wrongdoing.

Republicans and the White House are lining up behind Kavanaugh, signaling that they are publicly preparing for a fight over his nomination.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said the New Yorker piece was a “smear campaign.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), meanwhile, said Democrats are engaged in “wholesale character assassination.”

Story 4: Going Going Gong — Conflicted Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Fired/Resigns? — Bad Joke On Wearing A Wire to Record President and 25th Amendment Attempt To Remove President Trump and Again Delaying Declassification of FISA Warrant and Other Documents — President Trump Should Fire All Insubordinate Employees At Department of Justice and FBI — Videos

Fitton on officials blocking Trump FISA declassification

Trump declassifies FISA documents and Russia probe texts

Napolitano on potential fallout if Trump fires Rosenstein

Joe diGenova Talks Kavanaugh Hearing, Rosenstein Report

Roger Stone Takes On Rod Rosenstein and Judge Kavanaugh’s Accusers

Rosenstein suggested he secretly record Trump and discussed 25th amendment

Posted 2:35 p.m. yesterday
Updated 8:25 a.m. today

By Adam Goldman and Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times

The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Donald Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting Cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office for being unfit.

Rosenstein made these suggestions in the spring of 2017 when Trump’s firing of James Comey as FBI director plunged the White House into turmoil. Over the ensuing days, the president divulged classified intelligence to Russians in the Oval Office, and revelations emerged that Trump had asked Comey to pledge loyalty and end an investigation into a senior aide.

Rosenstein was just two weeks into his job. He had begun overseeing the Russia investigation and played a key role in the president’s dismissal of Comey by writing a memo critical of his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But Rosenstein was caught off guard when Trump cited the memo in the firing, and he began telling people that he feared he had been used.

Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and FBI officials. Several people described the episodes, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by FBI officials, including Andrew McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Rosenstein’s actions and comments.

None of Rosenstein’s proposals apparently came to fruition. It is not clear how determined he was about seeing them through, though he did tell McCabe that he might be able to persuade Attorney General Jeff Sessions and John Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security and now the White House chief of staff, to mount an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment.

The extreme suggestions show Rosenstein’s state of mind in the disorienting days that followed Comey’s dismissal. Sitting in on Trump’s interviews with prospective FBI directors and facing attacks for his own role in Comey’s firing, Rosenstein had an up-close view of the tumult. Rosenstein appeared conflicted, regretful and emotional, according to people who spoke with him at the time.

Rosenstein disputed this account.

“The New York Times’ story is inaccurate and factually incorrect,” he said in a statement. “I will not further comment on a story based on anonymous sources who are obviously biased against the department and are advancing their own personal agenda. But let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman also provided a statement from a person who was present when Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire. The person, who would not be named, acknowledged the remark but said Rosenstein made it sarcastically.

But according to the others who described his comments, Rosenstein not only confirmed that he was serious about the idea but also followed up by suggesting that other FBI officials who were interviewing to be the bureau’s director could also secretly record Trump.

McCabe, who was later fired from the FBI, declined to comment. His memos have been turned over to the special counsel investigating whether Trump associates conspired with Russia’s election interference, Robert Mueller, according to a lawyer for McCabe. “A set of those memos remained at the FBI at the time of his departure in late January 2018,” the lawyer, Michael R. Bromwich, said of his client. “He has no knowledge of how any member of the media obtained those memos.” The revelations about Rosenstein come as Trump has unleashed another round of attacks in recent days on federal law enforcement, saying in an interview with the Hill newspaper that he hopes his assaults on the FBI turn out to be “one of my crowning achievements” and that he only wished he had terminated Comey sooner.

“If I did one mistake with Comey, I should have fired him before I got here. I should have fired him the day I won the primaries,” Trump said. “I should have fired him right after the convention. Say, ‘I don’t want that guy.’ Or at least fired him the first day on the job.”

Days after ascending to the role of the nation’s No. 2 law enforcement officer, Rosenstein was thrust into a crisis.

On a brisk May day, Rosenstein and his boss, Sessions, joined Trump in the Oval Office, where the president informed them of his plan to oust Comey. To the surprise of White House aides who were trying to talk the president out of it, Rosenstein embraced the idea, even offering to write the memo about the Clinton email inquiry. He turned it in shortly after.

A day later, Trump announced the firing, and White House aides released Rosenstein’s memo, labeling it the basis for Comey’s dismissal. Democrats sharply criticized Rosenstein, accusing him of helping to create a cover story for the president to rationalize the termination.

“You wrote a memo you knew would be used to perpetuate a lie,” Sen. Christopher Murphy, D-Conn., wrote on Twitter. “You own this debacle.”

The president’s reliance on his memo caught Rosenstein by surprise, and he became angry at Trump, according to people who spoke to Rosenstein at the time. He grew concerned that his reputation had suffered harm and wondered whether Trump had motives beyond Comey’s treatment of Clinton for ousting him, the people said.

A determined Rosenstein began telling associates that he would ultimately be “vindicated” for his role in the matter. One week after the firing, Rosenstein met with McCabe and at least four other senior Justice Department officials, in part to explain his role in the situation.

During their discussion, Rosenstein expressed frustration at how Trump had conducted the search for a new FBI director, saying the president was failing to take the candidate interviews seriously. A handful of politicians and law enforcement officials, including McCabe, were under consideration.

To Rosenstein, the hiring process was emblematic of broader dysfunction stemming from the White House. He said both the process and the administration itself were in disarray, according to two people familiar with the discussion.

Rosenstein then raised the idea of wearing a recording device or “wire,” as he put it, to secretly tape the president when he visited the White House. One participant asked whether Rosenstein was serious, and he replied animatedly that he was.

If not him, then McCabe or other FBI officials interviewing with Trump for the job could perhaps wear a wire or otherwise record the president, Rosenstein offered. White House officials never checked his phone when he arrived for meetings there, Rosenstein added, implying it would be easy to secretly record Trump.

The suggestion itself was remarkable. While informants or undercover agents regularly use concealed listening devices to surreptitiously gather evidence for federal investigators, they are typically targeting drug kingpins and Mafia bosses in criminal investigations, not a president viewed as ineffectively conducting his duties.

In the end, the idea went nowhere, the officials said. But they called Rosenstein’s comments an example of how erratically he was behaving while he was taking part in the interviews for a replacement FBI director, considering the appointment of a special counsel and otherwise running the day-to-day operations of the more than 100,000 people at the Justice Department.

Rosenstein’s suggestion about the 25th Amendment was similarly a sensitive topic. The amendment allows for the vice president and majority of Cabinet officials to declare the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Merely conducting a straw poll, even if Kelly and Sessions were on board, would be risky if another administration official were to tell the president, who could fire everyone involved to end the effort.

McCabe told other FBI officials of his conversation with Rosenstein. None of the people interviewed said that they knew of him ever consulting Kelly or Sessions.

The episode is the first known instance of a named senior administration official weighing the 25th Amendment. Unidentified others have been said to discuss it, including an unnamed senior administration official who wrote an op-ed for The New York Times. That person’s identity is unknown to journalists in the Times news department. Some of the details in McCabe’s memos suggested that Rosenstein had regrets about the firing of Comey. During a May 12 meeting with McCabe, Rosenstein was upset and emotional, McCabe wrote, and said that he wished Comey were still at the FBI so he could bounce ideas off him.

Rosenstein also asked FBI officials on May 14, five days after Comey’s firing, about calling him for advice about a special counsel. The officials responded that such a call was a bad idea because Comey was no longer in the government. And they were surprised, believing that the idea contradicted Rosenstein’s stated reason for backing Comey’s dismissal — that he had shown bad judgment in the Clinton email inquiry.

Rosenstein, 53, is a lifelong public servant. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School, he clerked for a federal judge before joining the Justice Department in 1990 and was appointed U.S. attorney for Maryland.

Rosenstein also considered appointing as special counsel James M. Cole, himself a former deputy attorney general, three of the people said. Cole would have made an even richer target for Trump’s ire than has Mueller, a lifelong Republican: Cole served four years as the No. 2 in the Justice Department during the Obama administration and worked as a private lawyer representing one of Clinton’s longtime confidants, Sidney Blumenthal.

Cole and Rosenstein have known each for years. Cole, who declined to comment, was Rosenstein’s supervisor early in his Justice Department career when he was prosecuting public corruption cases.

Trump and his allies have repeatedly attacked Rosenstein, who oversees the Russia investigation because Sessions recused himself because of his role as a prominent Trump campaign supporter. Many of those same critics also have targeted McCabe, who was fired in March for failing to be forthcoming in a Justice Department inspector general investigation. McCabe’s actions were referred to federal prosecutors in Washington.

The president’s allies have seized on McCabe’s lack of candor to paint a damning picture of the FBI under Comey and assert the Russia investigation is tainted.

The Justice Department denied a request in late July from Trump’s congressional allies to release McCabe’s memos, citing an ongoing investigation that the lawmakers believed to be Mueller’s. Rosenstein not only supervises that investigation but is considered by the president’s lawyers as a witness for their defense because he also sought the dismissal of Comey, which is being investigated as possible obstruction of justice.